Super
by LJ58
Summary: In the real world, there are no such things as super heroes. Or are there?
1. Chapter 1

**I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy.**

_**SUPER**_

"Tango Leader, this is Tango Five," the radio crackled as the men in the ops center stared intently at the radar screen, trying to understand what they were facing. "I am approaching target area. Have a strong lock."

"Tango Five, do you see the bogey," Colonel Anderson demanded as his bald head gleamed brightly in the well lit room, the sweat covering his entire head plainly visible as he focused only on the screen with the others. "What is it?"

"I'm climbing over the clouds now, Tango Leader. Give me a sec," the pilot radioed back.

"Tango Five, Tango Four, I see it. I see it. I just…..Jesus, what the hell is that?" "Tango Flight, cut the chatter, and form up. I'm coming up under you, Tango Three.

"Tango Leader, I see it. I see…..

"Sonuva……I don't believe it," the pilot rasped as the men in the ops room on the new carrier frowned at the shock in their men's voices.

"Tango Five, report," the colonel ordered.

"Tango Five, this is Captain Saunders. Report, man. What's up there?" "A…..A man, sir," the pilot sputtered. "I swear to God, there's a man up here who is flying like….like some kind of damn comic book hero."

"Describe him, Flex," Colonel Anderson barked at the pilot. "Tell me exactly what you see?"

"I can't make out his features, sir, but he's…..white. Maybe Caucasian. Dark hair, not quite shoulder length. He's wearing…..Sir, he's wearing nothing but a tee shirt and jeans. He's not even wearing shoes. And he's starting to pull away from us like we're setting still."

"Tango Five, are you telling me that that there is a _man_ up there flying around our airspace?"

"I know how it sounds, colonel," the pilot answered, still sounding stunned. "But if we're not all seeing things, that is exactly what is up here.

"And he's pulling away at more than mach 3," the pilot exclaimed. "These old birds just can't match him."

"Target the bogey, and bring him down," the captain shouted over the mike. "Now. Shoot him down."

"Roger, Tango Leader. Locked on, firing two.

"Two away," the man reported as the men tracked the flight, and its target.

"Direct hit," the pilot shouted.

"I've still got the bogey on radar," another pilot shouted.

"Jesus H……He's stopped. He's just…..hanging in the air," another exclaimed over the tinny speaker. "And there's not a scratch on him."

"Blew by him," Tango Five reported. "Where is he? Where is…..?"

"Tango Five. Flex, he's on your ship. He's on your ship. Roll, man. Roll," another of the two wingman shouted.

"Holy Mother of God," Five's voice screeched. "He's ripping into my fuselage. I'm losing hydraulics and power. I'm going down. I'm going down."

"Bail out, bail out," Three shouted.

"I can't punch out," Flex shouted as the sound of twisting metal, and screaming air filled the speakers. "Systems are out. I'm going down. I'm going……"

The speaker squealed shrilly, then the pilot's voice was gone even as a dull boom that was audible even in the ops room sounded from high over their heads.

"Tango Five is clear," Four shouted. "He got out. He got out. Scramble rescue. I'm switching to cannons. Engaging the bogy now," he reported.

"Tango Three, firing two," the other wingman called out.

"Another hit. The bastard is still coming," the pilot screamed over the hammering of machine gun fire over the open mike. "He can't be human. He can't be….."

"Tango Three punched out, but the target just shredded his bird like it was made of confetti," Tango Four reported.

"Tango Four, abort. Repeat, abort," the captain shouted now. "Get out of there."

"I'm bugging out," the pilot reported even as he banked away from the impossible creature just turning away from Tango Three's falling bird to look his way. Even as he did, he felt his ship shudder, and he shouted in alarm.

"I'm punching out. Power's gone. This bird is on fire. _I'm_ on fire," he screamed, and then was lost.

"Scramble rescue, and get the ship on full alert.

"Have the escort go to battle stations, now," Colonel Anderson ordered the men around him in the ops center.

"Bogey is headed northwest, accelerating again," the radar man reported. "He's not staying after all."

"Track him. Track him," the captain shouted. "I want to know……"

"He's gone, sir. Completely off the scopes."

"Impossible," Colonel Anderson swore as he returned to look over the man's shoulder. "We're tied in with satellite surveillance for this entire hemisphere. He couldn't have disappeared like that unless…."

"Yes, sir," the radar man nodded. "He went vertical, and accelerated so fast it was like he just….vanished."

The captain frowned as he stood behind his men, wiping a damp handkerchief over his sweating head. "Are you telling me a flying man just downed three of our best, and went into orbit in less than a minute?"

"Captain, that….man was so fast he not only went through the sound barrier, he was damn near close to reaching escape velocity judging by what we saw here," the colonel told him grimly. "We'd better notify the brass. This one is way over our heads in more ways than one."

"Granted," the officer nodded grimly.

"_Clinton_, we have the men in sight. Looks like they all survived," a rescue chopper reported just then. "We're moving to extract them now."

"Roger, rescue," the captain replied, then tuned to the ops commander. "I'm headed to the bridge.

"I want a complete radio transcript, and incident report ready within the hour," he told Anderson. "If I'm going to give this to the brass, I don't want to look as bad as I'm likely to sound.

"Flying men," he grimaced as he walked out of the room.

_**S**_

He looked down on the curved horizon of the planet below, lost in a high cloud bank that reflected the setting sun that spread a golden glow across the sky around him. He ran a hand through his dark hair, wearing nothing more than a pair of denim jeans now badly shredded by the high caliber rounds that had been fired at him earlier.

His ocular abilities easily penetrated the cloud cover, focusing on part of the northern continent in the western hemisphere he would have called home anytime, and anyplace else. Only it was rapidly becoming obvious that he was not on _his_ world. It might look like it. Feel like it. But this was as alien a planet as he was alien to the world he called home.

A careful inspection of the planet, and the orbital debris told him there was no Justice League here. No watchtower, at any rate. He had yet to find any evidence of any metas at all on this planet. He frowned as he hovered in the air thousands of miles above the earth, and tried to figure out where he was, and how he had gotten here.

His last conscious memory was of visiting his mother in Smallville. He had heard something peculiar coming from the old barn just before daybreak, and had gone out to investigate. He saw nothing obvious, but the strange sound that had drew his attention. He stepped into the barn, and then….nothing.

He woke up laying in a field somewhere near the southern edge of the continent, completely naked, too, but it soon became apparent he was not on his world. He took a super speed jaunt back to Smallville after borrowing some clothes from a line outside a rural home only to discover it didn't exist here. There was no Kent farm. No Kents at all in the area he remembered as home. He decided to fly over the planet, to get an idea of what had happened to him, only he had barely gotten halfway over the Atlantic when the jets attacked him.

He tried to outrun them when they fired on him.

Deciding to neutralize them, he found they were far more fragile than he remembered on his home world. A light touch tore through the steel alloy hull like another man might rip through tissue paper. Before he could try controlling himself, he was almost rammed by a second jet after he managed to pulled the pilot out of the first jet before it exploded from catastrophic systems failures. Necessity had him disabling the last jet, and ensuring the other pilots were able to get clear of the debris before their damaged ships fell into the sea below.

Still, even he was astonished at how easily he handled the high velocity rounds, and the rockets that caught him point blank before he could elude them. He had no choice but to go sub-orbital to escape the authorities before someone got seriously hurt. He needed time to think. To plan. One thing was certain, he was not going to be able to walk around other people until he got some clothes.

His costume was still back in Smallville. His Smallville, so he couldn't change. Not that it was likely to be recognized in this world. He sighed, enjoying the warmth, and invigoration that came from the sun's rays. At least that had not changed. Still, he was going to have to be extra careful here. It seemed he was even more powerful than ever on this world. At least, it seemed that way.

He decided to wait for nightfall, find an isolated place, and arrange for clothing.

No identification, or money was going to make things tricky for a while, but he was going to have to do a little careful shoplifting for the time being if he was going to get through this without causing more trouble. It rankled, but he figured he could repay whoever he had to 'borrow' from later, depending on how things turned out. For now, as his companion who was better versed in these matters would say, survival was the first concern.

That meant he had to blend in.

He continued to wait out the sunset. He could still see the shock on those men's faces as he pulled them out of the cockpits. He saw the stark terror in their eyes, and knew well enough from some men's reactions on his own world that he wasn't always seen as a hero. To the men on this world, they wouldn't even consider him anything but a menace after that encounter.

He had no choice but to lay low for now.

At least until he could figure out what happened, and maybe get back where he belonged.

_**S**_

"Can you believe the nonsense that they call news these days," the man at the bar snorted as the television reported droned on about the mysterious encounter that had downed three navy jets.

"Ah, if you believe aliens did it, I've got a bridge in the desert I'd like to sell you," a half drunken man chortled.

"Clark," the bartender shouted. "Get out here, and clean up the corner booth. I got people waiting, you moron."

The young man sighed as he came out of the back, dragging a mop and bucket.

"What," the bartender demanded of the guy at the end of the bar sipping black coffee.

"Sorry. It's just….My name is Clark, too," he smiled faintly. "I guess I just sort of….reacted…."

"Whatever," the balding man who ran the place grumbled as he switched off the news, and brought cheers from several men as a ballgame was turned on.

The coffee-drinking Clark focused back on his coffee, using his heat vision to warm the cold coffee the guy had served him. Apparently, the Navy was claiming a series of malfunctions had brought the planes down. This world had its own conspiracy theorists here, though. There were those that claimed aliens had been testing their own secret weapons. Aliens were apparently unknown here, and while there were theories and claims abounding, there were yet to be any concrete evidence of visitations on this Earth.

"You gonna order anything else," the man behind the bar growled again as he studied his cup after draining it for the second time. "Or you planning on drinking all my coffee?"

"I think I've had enough," Clark smiled thinly as he rose from the bar stool, and headed for the door. He had been investigating this world through the usual resources, and having found its history fairly close to mirroring his own had made things easier.

The major difference was the lack of any metas, and the absence of a certain bald megalomaniac in the White House. Otherwise, the planet could have easily been his own world. He had yet to find any reason, or explanation for his presence here, though. He investigated the site where he had woke up, but it was just a field. An empty, rural lot.

He dropped a dollar on the bar he had earned panhandling of all things. Still, snatching some old clothes from a charity drop had been demeaning enough. He was not yet ready to steal money when he didn't necessarily have to eat, and that would have been the only thing he really needed to buy just now.

He was almost to the door when it suddenly burst open, and three young men in ski masks stormed the bar with shotguns. "Everyone freeze," one of them shouted as the second one jabbed his gun into his chest.

"Back up, ass-wipe, or you'll be road kill."

He saw everyone looking at the first thug, so felt safe as his right hand flashed, and on the way up, squeezed both barrels closed. He smiled wryly as he looked right into the kid's eyes who couldn't be eighteen, and asked, "You always hold people up with a broken gun?" "Broken gun? What the devil are you….? What the hell," the thug gasped, his eyes wide as he stared at him in genuine horror.

Well, darn, he must have seen him 'fix' the barrel.

"Give me the cash, you old fart. The cash, or I'll fucking kill you," the thug behind him shouted at the bartender.

Clark sighed, and decided to act before someone got hurt.

"Time for you to go to sleep," he told him, and tapped the kid on the head with a forefinger so fast he was out cold before Clark turned to the second gunman who was forcing patrons to the back of the room so he could hold them, and rob them.

In a blur of speed, he put himself between the thug and the patrons in case he had an itchy trigger finger. He crushed the barrel of his weapon, and tapped him, too, sending him into unconsciousness even as he turned to the first gunman who was only then realizing something was going on behind his back.

"All right, hero," he swore, pulling both triggers before even he could reach him.

The pellets struck him full in the chest, shredding his sweatshirt, and leaving him once more in need of another shirt. He sighed even as he glanced around, using his heat vision to ensure the ricochets didn't hurt anyone. Then he grabbed the trigger-happy gunman's shotgun, squeezing its barrel flat before he grabbed the last thug, shaking his head as he tapped him with a forefinger, leaving him out cold with his friends.

"Someone call the police," he suggested as everyone stood gaping at him.

"You're…..not human," the bartender gasped as he stared at the hole in Clark's sweatshirt, and the untouched flesh beneath.

"You're half right," he said, and was out the door, and in the sky, flying as fast as he could before anyone could think of tracking him. He wasn't doing any good in that city anyway.

_**S**_

"It's the same…man," Flex, AKA Captain James Oliver told Captain Saunders as he looked at the stills taken from the bar's surveillance camera, and forwarded through Homeland Security.

"So," the dark-suited agent who closed the folder of pictures he had brought into the room where he and the pilot's superior officer had been brought after the carrier had docked at Norfolk. "This is the 'guy' that downed three jets, and apparently flew off into space.

"Now he's in a coastal city, and saving locals from a bunch of bangers? Something doesn't add up here."

"How can we be sure it is the same, ah, person," James asked. "I mean, what if it's a robot, or something? Couldn't there be more than one of them?"

"Listen, captain," the agent smiled sardonically. "Whatever the UFO nuts, and other sci-fi types claim, we are light years from creating the kind of technology that would let anyone build something like that. And I'm speaking for any other government on the planet as well."

"Then how do you explain this….being," Ian Saunders asked him bluntly.

"Frankly, sir, we're still at a loss here. If it hadn't been for the bar full of witnesses that all saw this guy disappear by flying off into the night sky, we wouldn't even have realized the connection."

"A bar full of drunks," Captain Saunders asked dryly. "They're your witnesses?"

"Touché, captain. However, I doubt your people were drunk when you say you encountered him."

"Yeah," the bald officer nodded wearily. "Still, there has to be a logical explanation….."

"I don't suppose you're going to let this report go public either?"

"We're suppressing all news of this being for the time being. We don't want to cause hysteria, or panic when we're supposed to be controlling those very things in the first place," the agent told him. "We appreciate your cooperation, Captain Oliver, and thank you for your time."

"That's it? Look at a picture, and go home?"

"What did you expect, captain," the man asked.

"How about what you intend to do about this? People need to know to look out for him?"

"And do what," the man in the dark suit asked. "He ripped your jets apart, survived multiple rocket attacks, and shrugged off shotgun blasts as easily as he did your cannon fire.

"Tell me what I should tell the average citizen to do if they see someone like that, sir," the man demanded of him.

"Tell them to run," Ian Saunders told him grimly.

"So far, it seems this guy is trying to stay low, and off our radar. That gives us hope he's not an overt threat o the nation.

"Of course, he could be hiding his real intentions by purposely staying low. We don't know. The truth is, gentleman, you know as much as we do. We haven't even seen him yet.

"Not firsthand.

"But I can assure you, we're handling this as carefully as we can. And that means we keep it low-key, and out of the press. The last thing we need is public hysteria, or worse, a bunch of conspiracy nuts, or bounty hunters all trying to track him down before we can find him."

"I understand," the pilot sighed. "It's just….I don't know. I was scared as hell up there when he tore into my jet.

"But in the end, he did save me. He pulled me out of that bird before it blew, and he could have just left me."

"So," the agent asked as he turned for the door.

"So, I started thinking. What if this guy is really trying to help people?"

"People that want to help come to us. They fill out applications. They don't drop out of the sky, or whatever," the man said in disdain as he left the room.

Flex glanced at his captain, and shook his head. "Nice guy."

"He's got a point."

"Yeah, I suppose," James nodded as he climbed to his feet. "Let's get out of here."

"What's the rush?"

"I still have that psych review before the docs clear me to fly again," he grimaced. "I'd just as soon not look too reluctant by being late for the appointment."

"Right," Ian nodded. "Let's go. I don't care for these meetings either," the captain admitted to his pilot.

_**S**_

"I'm telling you the truth," the young boy told his parents. "I saw a flying man come out of the sky and steal dad's shirt."

"When did you start getting such an god-awful imagination," his father demanded as he stood over the seven year old who was covered in mud from his playing outside.

"Did you ruin your father's shirt playing in the mud, and get scared," his mother asked with a more understanding smile.

"Honest, mom," he whined. "He was taller than dad, and came out of the sky, and then flew back up again after he grabbed dad's shirt.

"I only got muddy trying to follow him when I fell into the creek."

"Boy, if you don't stop such obvious….."

The threat was interrupted by a knocking at the front door. "I'll get it," Sara Connors told her husband. "You peel the rest of his clothes off, and get him in the tub."

"Maybe you should……?" David was too late. Sara had left him with the task of getting their son moderately presentable before carrying him through the house to the waiting bath. He sighed, and knelt down to start tugging at the wet, muddy shirt that stuck to him like glue.

He was about ready to give up and cut the muddy tee shirt from his son's body when Sara came up behind him. "H-Honey," she spoke a bit anxiously. "Roger wants to talk to you."

"What's he want now," he sighed, knowing the old man next door tended to have more complaints than anyone he had ever known. Especially considering they lived five miles apart here in the corner of the state most people avoided if they could help it.

"Honey, you should….listen to him."

"Jus' wondering did you see something," the old man asked when David went to the door, glad to leave the muddy boy behind.

The old man didn't seem angry, or upset as usual. This time he didn't even mention his son in four letter terminology. He was scratching his head, and looking bemused. "See what," he asked.

"I was telling' your wife, Connors. I was out plowing up the backside of m'place, when I heard your kid shout. First off, I figured he was up to some mischief. So I went to see what he was doing."

"Look, Mr. Elliot….." "That's when I found your boy face down in the creek, and trying to climb out. Only he wasn't looking at me, or the ground. He was starin' up. So's I looked up, too, and…..

"You'll think I been drinking, Connors, but damned if I didn't see a half naked man _flying off _with one your old shirts.

"I swear," he added, nodding his head. "Thought I was goin' nuts. Till your boy jumps up muddier any sow I ever seen, and yells; "_He stole my dad's shirt_," 'bout as loud as he can."

"My….shirt," David swallowed hard.

"Yep. That dreadful blue flannel your so partial to of late.

"He had it in one hand, and was flying right off like a bird."

David shook his head. "That's…..That's impossible. Men can't….fly," he rasped, thinking of his son's tearful claims.

"And don't I know it. Only that one didn't seem to know. He took off like he was born with wings."

The two men stared at one another, then Roger Elliot shook his head. "So, you didn't see nothing?" "No, but….Sam has been trying to convince us he did. I thought he was spinning stories again until you…..

"So, ah, Roger. What now?"

"Well, I'm wishin' you'd seen him, too. I don't care to lower my reputation around here any more than it already is," he grimaced. "And if I go tell Bob what I seen," he shook his head as he named the country sheriff. "I'm liable to spend a night in jail for drunkenness."

"Well, I didn't see anything. But…..Sam obviously did. He's been going on about that flying man until we thought he was going to…..

"Never mind. Maybe…..We should just forget this. He's obviously not sticking around."

"I don't know. I figured we ought'a warn folks, at the least. What if he comes back?" David frowned. "You think he might?" "Who can say," Roger shrugged. "He might just be testing the….air, so to speak 'round here. If he thinks he can get away with a shirt? What might be next on his list?" "I'll call Bob," David said, thinking of his son, and how easily he could have been taken, or hurt, had this man wanted to try something else. Roger was right, they had better call the sheriff, just to be safe.

"Come on in," he said as an afterthought as Sara carried their naked, muddy son through the house at just that moment.

"Mom," the seven year old groaned with all his boy's pride at being held naked before a stranger.

"You hush, young man. You're in enough trouble," Sara told him, lapsing into the security of a mother's role rather than face what was being unveiled around them.

_**S**_

"Hello," the strange voice spoke from behind her.

"Oh," Laura gasped, almost dropping her ax on her foot as she spun around from the wood pile to gape at the tall, muscular man in a faded, blue flannel shirt, and equally worn jeans. "I….I didn't hear you. Where did you come from," she asked a bit anxiously as she looked around the yard that surrounded her isolated home.

"I didn't mean to scare you," he told her. "I was just passing through, and well…..You can probably tell my luck hasn't been all that good of late," he said, looking down at his worn clothing. "I was wondering if I might be able to…….well, do some chores for you in return for…..?" "You're hungry," she asked, running a trembling hand through her graying, brown hair. "I….I can offer you a meal, I guess. For…..For….."

"I can cut your wood for you," the big man told her with a smile as he followed her glance around the ramshackle old place she had obviously had trouble keeping up of late.

"Do you….know how to cut wood," she asked, eyeing the ax still in her other hand.

"I grew up on a farm in Kansas," he told her with a smile. "I did my share of chores before I left."

"Oh, well……"

She handed him the ax, and stepped back. "I'll….I'll get you something to eat while you're working then," she said quietly, and headed for the back door left open against the afternoon heat.

"All right."

He felt her watching as he took the ax, and turned to the carelessly stacked half logs meant to be cut into wood. The fact there were only a few rows of wood left told him she had either been gone for a long time, or she had been struggling alone. He hefted the ax carefully, mindful of his solar-fueled strength, and began to chop at the log before him she had barely managed to nick.

He heard her turn away, and kept working, discretely using his heat vision at low strength to aid him since the ax was so obviously dull. He heard the woman in the kitchen, murmuring to herself, though to his ears, her voice was as clear as crystal.

She was lamenting the fact her phone had been cut off last week, and she couldn't contact the sheriff. She was also telling herself she was being silly, and that the drifter outside was likely some harmless vagabond, not an escaped serial killer.

He smiled wryly at that, and kept working. He didn't measure time. He didn't need to when it came to that. At his current peak, he could work literally nonstop, and still hardly notice any depreciable loss in his reserves. What he needed was time, and a place to think without drawing unwanted attention. He had been careless earlier that day when he spotted a shirt that might fit him. It did, but the boy had spotted him, and his shouts had drawn a man that had gotten a very good look at him.

He flew off at subsonic speed, not wanting to cause any sonic booms, or draw any more attention from the powers-that-be, but now he was still left with unanswered questions, and no place to find answers. He needed to stop, and just think. He could use Bruce's mind at a time like this, but he was no mental slouch himself when he focused his mind on a task despite is reputation for being all brawn, and no brain. He just needed a little time.

"I have sandwiches and tea just now," the woman told him as she came out, then froze, and stared at him in shock.

He stopped, looking back at her, and tried to smile reassuringly, but then he took in her astonishment. "How….? How did you cut so much wood," she gasped, staring at the pile of firewood that had grown up before him in just under a few hours.

"Guess cutting wood is like a bicycle, ma'am," he told her in what he hoped sounded like a comforting tone. "Once I got to going, it just got easy."

"My…..My husband couldn't have cut that much on his best day," Laura exclaimed, staring at the pile that now filled her shed, and was almost waist high, every log but one having been cut up.

"Well, ma'am, if you would prefer I left," he suggested, not liking the way she was looking at him.

"No. No, of course not," Laura shook her head, trying to tell herself she was being silly. After all, her husband had not been a farmer from birth. He had been an aging accountant trying to get away from the stress of city life. Only the stress of making a go out here had finally finished him off, leaving her with a piece of land she couldn't sell, and little else.

"So, you mentioned food," he asked her when she stood there staring at him, and the wood.

"Oh. Oh, of course. I…I guess you must have really worked up an appetite," she said, and gestured toward the open kitchen door. "I'm a little short this month, so I made up some sandwiches, and a pitcher of tea.

"It's nice and cold. The tea, I mean."

"That's fine, ma'am."

"Oh, I'm…..Laura. Laura Hastings," she told him.

"Clark," he told her automatically. "Clark……Wayne," he amended a bit clumsily, not wanting to give his real name.

Bizarrely enough, he had finally found mention of himself, and his friends and family. In comic books, of all things. On this world, he was a fictional character in a child's funny book. Somehow, he didn't think calling himself Kent would go over too well with this woman that would be likely to know the character judging from the children's pictures he spotted around the walls of the homey kitchen and dining combination room he entered behind her.

"Nice looking children, Mrs. Hastings," he told her as he waited until she sat down at the table before he took a seat.

From the look of surprise on her face, she wasn't expecting manners out of him.

"Thank you. They're…grandchildren, actually. Nolan is the oldest now. Six years old."

"I take it they don't visit," he asked as he poured tea from a stoneware pitcher into her glass before pouring his own. The table was small enough that he could easily reach across it with little effort.

"How do you know….?" "That wistful sound in your voice. It sounds like my mother's when she tries not to lecture me about staying away for too long."

"I guess mothers, or grandmothers, do miss their children."

"Yes, I suppose so," he nodded.

"Are you married, Clark," she asked him artlessly.

"Yes."

"Yet you're out here….?"

"Wandering around? Well, it's complicated, Mrs. Hastings. The fact is…..I'm a long way from home, and I'm not sure when I'll be getting back."

"Were you…..in prison," she asked a little anxiously.

"No," he smiled, shaking his head as he bit into the first of the thick ham sandwiches she had made for them. She had put three on his plate, leaving only one for herself. A discreet glance around the kitchen with his x-ray vision told him she didn't have much to spare at all. "I was….I've been away," he told her.

"Oh, you were in the war," she nodded.

"The war. Yes, I guess you could say so," he murmured.

"You don't have to feel bad about it. My oldest son was in it, too. He came back a little…..well, off. It took years for him to settle down, and rebuild his life. I'm sure if you remember what is really important, you'll be fine, too.

"You're certainly not afraid of hard work," she smiled suddenly as she glanced out the open door. "That's a good sign."

"My father always told me that work was a good cure for worry. By the time you finished it, you likely would forget all about what was worrying you.

"Of course, he neglected to mention that on a farm the work never stopped, so you had lots of time to forget things."

She smiled at his wry humor, nodding, "My husband found out about that. Only he never could turn loose of his worrying. It killed him in the end."

"I'm sorry," Clark frowned. "I didn't realize….."

"It's all right. You could hardly be expected to know I'm the local widow."

"Well, I'd be more than glad to stay a little while and do some work for you," he told her.

"To be honest, Clark," she told him. "I'm living off charity myself. I don't have much left to give you even if I wanted to take you up on your offer."

He sat back, finishing his second sandwich, and then pushed the plate with the third away. He felt a little guilty about taking the last of her food when he didn't really need it. "Mrs. Hastings….." "Laura, please," she told him with a faint smile. "I feel like…..

"You know, it's strange, but you look oddly familiar."

"Well, I can't say how," he told her, shaking his head again. "I've never been around here before."

"I'm certain of that," she smiled faintly again. "Still…..

"Well, it hardly matters. You can sleep in the barn, if you want. But….I can't offer you more than that just now," she told him. "I almost wish I could, but….."

She shrugged, and looked at the last sandwich before him. "I'm full," he told her, catching her glance. "You make a good sandwich, though. Very filling."

"I'll….just wrap it up for you for breakfast," she suggested.

"Well, I'll go finish the woodpile," he told her. "It's only fair."

"That's all right," she cut him off. "You have already done a lot more than I expected….."

"It's fine, Mrs. Hastings," he told her. "I don't mind work, as you noted, and to be frank, you could use some help."

The older woman sighed, then nodded. "I would appreciate it. Mr. Peabody dragged the logs up here last week, but…..well, charity only goes so far even in this part of the country."

"Maybe….I might just be able to help you out before I have to go," he said as he rose, draining the tea before he turned toward the door.

"The wood is more than enough," she told him again as he merely stepped outside, and glanced back to wave at her.

"What a strange man," she murmured, and rose to clean up the kitchen after their meager meal.

_**S**_

Clark sat in the loft of the barn, pondering things late into the night.

The place was as bad as the house, and the rest of the small farm that had obviously been neglected for some time now. Laura Hastings was obviously in trouble, and wasn't going to make it much longer the way she was going here. Not alone. He came looking for a temporary sanctuary in this world, and ended up finding someone in need of help.

Maybe it was karma. His destiny, as a few of his more mystic-minded companions on his world would say.

He stood up, already aware of the pile of neglected building supplies in the back of the barn that had never been used. Her husband must have had grand plans. He lifted his hands, flexing them briefly, and decided he had been reacting long enough since waking in this world. It was time to act.

After all, it didn't matter what dimension he had been dropped into, or how, or why. He was still the same man. He was still a hero.

And heroes didn't turn their back on those in need.

_**S**_

"It's been almost two weeks since this guy appeared, and there hasn't been a single sighting since the bar," the lead agent spat as he entered his superior's office.

"So, you're telling me a man with the power to rip our fastest jets apart with his bare hands has just…..vanished?" "Maybe he went back to where he came from," another of the four agents present in the briefing suggested.

"That doesn't negate our need for answers," the first agent shot back as the man behind the desk sat absently drumming his fingers as he listened to the petty bickering.

"Gentlemen," the man behind the desk spoke quietly, yet caught everyone's attention. Beyond his size, the burly agent's reputation had made him a virtual legend in the office. "The fact is, whoever, or whatever this man is, he is powerful.

"And if there is anything we have learned in our experience, it is that power…any power, does not exist in a vacuum. It demands to be used.

"So, if he is still out there, we will be hearing from him. Until then, we need to keep our minds, and our eyes open, so we will continue to monitor all sources that indicate there might be something odd happening……"

"We might have a lead," a young brunette told him as she burst into the room just then.

"What is it," the lead agent snapped.

She ignored him, and put the report on the desk in front of the director. "Nine days ago, a little boy spotted a flying man who swooped down and stole his father's shirt off the line due east of his last sighting. The only reason the report was logged was because a neighbor saw the same man when he went to investigate the kid's shouts."

"Nine days ago," the director murmured. "The day after the bar."

"Any indication of what direction he headed," the agent asked.

"None," the woman told him. "The report stated simply that he flew up into the sky."

"After stealing a shirt. This guy is unbelievably powerful, and all he did was steal a shirt?"

"The punk at the bar blew a hole in the one he had on the night before this report," another of the men realized. "It'd be hard to pass yourself off in a crowd with a shotgun blast in your shirt."

"All right. Someone get out there and interview the kid, and the other witness. Find out anything the local boys didn't bother learning. Maybe you can pick up something they missed.

"In the meantime, I want everyone scouring the news, and AP listings. I don't care how it sounds, if it's the slightest bit hinky, I want to know about it," the director told them.

"You really think this is more than just a hoax," the woman asked the director after the other agents left.

"You don't rip three navy jets apart in front of a battle group without being seen, Ms. Graves," the director told her. "And while it's brief, and fragmented at best, our satellites are definitely picking something up that is moving around the globe at fantastic speeds.

"Whatever it is, we have to assume it's real, and a potential threat."

The prim agent nodded. "I'll keep reviewing the newscasts," she assured him. "If what you said about power is right, he's sure to slip up again before too long."

_**S**_

"I have a confession to make," Clark told Laura who was gaping at her completely rebuilt barn. A barn that was now not only refurbished, but cleaned, and freshly painted.

What made it so unbelievable was because it had apparently been done in one night. Every bit of it. Because she knew it had been the same rundown, near-ruin just the night before when she went to check on her few chickens. Suddenly, the odd noises last night made sense.

"Who….? What are you?" "Well, obviously, I'm not from around here," Clark told her as he sat on a pile of debris from his work project so as not to alarm her by appearing too threatening. "And I thought if I helped you out a bit, maybe you would hear me out, and not go running off to the authorities."

Laura swallowed hard. "You….can't be human," she realized, looking at the barn, and at him again.

"Honestly," he said with a wry smile. "I'm not.

"But I was raised by humans, as a man."

"In….Kansas," she rasped.

"Yes," he nodded.

"You know," Laura eyed him suspiciously. "You're starting to sound like you're right out of a…..a…..

"Ohmigod. It can't be," she gasped, staring at where he sat.

"Mrs. Hastings," he asked with a frown.

"My…..My son used to read comic books. His favorite….."

Clark groaned.

"You look just like….."

"Clark Kent," he asked with a smile.

Laura nodded mechanically, unable to tear her eyes from him.

"You…..don't have a cape under that shirt," she asked a little uneasily.

"No," he told her.

She relaxed slightly.

"I left it back home."

Laura's mouth dropped open, and he stood slowly as he smiled at her. "Could we finish that talk now," he asked.

She managed to close her mouth, and stared up at him. "Are you trying to tell me that you're _really_…..? I mean that you are…._him_?"

Clark rose five feet off the ground, his feet standing on empty air.

Laura almost hit the ground, out cold. He caught her just before she would have hit the ground.

Clark sighed as he berated himself for showing off, and returned to the ground to carry the woman back inside the house. This, he decided, was going to be a long day. A very long day. Still, he reasoned that he was going to need an ally to get around this strange world, and she was the best prospect he had encountered to date.

"Feeling better," he asked just ten minutes after he lay her on the couch, and found a damp cloth to cool her flushed cheeks.

"How can you….?

"I mean…..this is the _real_ world. You can't be….."

"I'm not from your world, ma'am. Something brought me here. I've been trying to figure out what, and how to get home, ever since.

"In the meantime, I'm trying to keep out of sight so I don't alarm the authorities on your world."

"So…..You're really….?"

"If it helps, I'm from another dimension. A friend of mine has a theory that we sometimes share our existence with closer dimensions through dreams, and other mystic, or ethereal contacts. I've not sure myself, but it could account for your world's knowledge of my existence in my dimension."

"Wow," Laura rasped as she sat up stiffly. "So, you really can fly? Faster than a speeding bullet? All of that stuff?"

He smiled as he moved back to let her sit up. "I do have some abilities few others do, even in my dimension," he told her. "But I still often just think of myself as a farm boy from Kansas."

"Smallville."

"That's right."

"There's no such place here, you know," she told him.

"I know. That was how I figured out I wasn't on my world any longer."

"So…..How did you end up here," she asked as she looked up at as he stood a few feet away from her, trying not to alarm her again.

"I'm not sure. I was visiting my mother's place, and went out to the barn when I heard some odd sound out there. The next thing I know I'm waking up in your world, and trying to figure out where I was, and how I got here."

She frowned. "Sound? High-pitched frequencies?" "You're a scientist," he asked in surprise.

"No, but I remembered that I saw a special on television last month before I….lost my cable….. Ah, anyway, a Chinese scientist was speculating that certain frequencies might let people travel through time, or even pierce space/time barriers that would make traveling past light speed possible."

"Faster than light drives aren't viable here," he frowned. "Wait, that's right. You haven't yet learned…..

"Never mind," he stopped himself as she looked up at him with evident interest.

"Then it is possible?

"I'm a Discovery Channel junkie," she smiled. "When I can afford the cable. I used to think about going into astronomy, but I got pregnant, and married, instead. Ah, in that order."

Clark nodded. "Do you remember that scientist's name," he asked.

"I couldn't tell you. I only remember he was Chinese," she told him. "Still, we could look on the net. Of course, we'd have to go into town, and hope the library wasn't crowded. I don't have….."

His gaze was locked on a wall, and she noticed his frown as he studied a patch on her peeling wallpaper.

"Uhm….Clark? Or do I call you Su…."

"Just Clark, please. You're about to have company. I'd prefer if we kept who I am a secret for now."

"That's going to be difficult when I have a new barn out there for all to see."

"How long since anyone has been here," he asked quickly as the blue sedan pulled up in the yard outside the house.

"Almost four months," she admitted before she could think of anything else but the truth. "I don't visit much, and no one comes to see me since my kids moved out."

"So four months ago I showed up asking for work, and I've been working on the barn since. That should about cover the timeline.

"Tell them I just wanted a place to stay."

"They'll think you're a fugitive," she grimaced as she jerked her head toward the door.

"Tell them I'm just hiking across the world, finding myself, as I've heard some people say."

She nodded as she headed toward the door where someone knocked hard now.

"So, who is it," she asked.

"Blue sedan. A heavyset man with thin brown hair."

"Oh, no," she groaned.

"Trouble," he frowned.

"My banker. He's been trying to get me to sell for pennies for years. I missed the last payment, and I can guess what he's thinking."

He nodded. "Stall him. I'm sure we can work something out to help you get through this, too."

She looked at him, and felt an unusual surge of confidence that came from his presence beside her as she went to the door. "Mr. Saxon," she smiled coolly. "What a surprise," she said as she opened the door to find the man standing there already sweating despite the early morning hour. "What can I do for you?" "Mrs. Hastings, you know what I want. I'm giving you a courtesy call, but in five days, you're going to be evicted if you don't have the money for your mortgage. I'll have no choice but to foreclose, and…..

"Who is this," he frowned as he saw the tall man with bright blue eyes step up behind her.

"Mr. Saxon," the stranger nodded at him.

"This is Clark," Laura smiled. "He's helping me fix up the place.

"You should see what a fine job he's already done on the barn."

"I…..didn't notice," he drawled. "All the same, five days, Mrs. Hastings. It would be best if you just took my offer, and….."

"No," she cut him off. "This was my husband's legacy, Bart, and I'm not going to give it up without a fight."

"Laura," he switched to an informal approach. "Be reasonable. The bank needs its money, and five days is not much time to get that much capital. Now, I can get you out of this dump, and pay you enough to get a reasonable apartment in town….."

"I'm not giving up my home, Bart," she told him, and slammed the door in his face.

Then she sagged against the door. She looked up at Clark with a sad smile. "I don't know what good bravado will do," she admitted. "I don't have a chance of getting that much money by the end of the week."

"Maybe I can help," he told her. "First of all, you have to wonder why he's so interested in your place when you're rather isolated, have no apparent resources. Also, there is no direct income from the land, or obvious mineral deposits.

"Or do you know if there is something like that?"

"I couldn't tell you," she sighed. "My husband took care of all of that, and he's long gone," she sighed.

"Let me look around. Then we'll figure something out to help you. Trust me, I won't let you lose your home."

"But….why should you care? I would think you'd be more interested in….."

"Getting back home? I am, Mrs. Hastings," he told her. "But this is what I do. Wherever I am, I help those in need.

"Just now, that means you.

"Now, do you have a map of your place? I'd like to check it out before I do anything else."

"Well, yeah. Henry had a survey map made of the place. I think it's in the kitchen," she paused to consider as she led the way through the house.

"You know, I really can't believe….."

She looked back at him, seeing him through new eyes, and noted the broad stretch of his shoulders beneath the taut flannel. "Then again," she grinned. "You don't look like any vagrant I've ever seen before," she chuckled softly as she went to a drawer, and sifted through some papers.

"Here it is," she said at last. "The deed, and a surveyor's map."

Clark spread both out on the table, and eyed the documents. "You do have full mineral rights to all resources on, or below the land," he told her as he studied the deed before he began checking the map. "And it looks like your husband was looking for something judging by these marks," he told her, tapping a few penciled in notes obviously added after the surveyor had drawn up the document.

"Henry was always out looking for the best way to do things. He might have been looking for a new water source. Our last well didn't do too well. And he worked so hard on it, too."

"I'd hold on to these if I were you," Clark told her. "I'll go inspect the place myself, and see if I can't find out what your husband, and perhaps your banker, are looking for out here."

"Maybe you could find some buried treasure," she grinned. "I heard once that some Civil War gold was supposed to be buried in this county somewhere."

"Really," he asked, one brow rising as he smiled at her as she took the deed and map and tucked it into her sundress' pocket.

"I doubt it's real. You hear all kinds of stories like that around these parts. General Lee was supposed to have been running from Sheridan through this area right before the end of the war, and was supposed to have buried all kinds of things.

"If you think about it, it's a wonder he ever got away, since he was supposed to have been burying treasure, arms, or whatever all over the place."

"I've learned men can be very ingenious when they wish to be," Clark told her. "I'll check out the place, and then we can decide what to do."

"I almost hope you find something. Just so I can stick it under Bart's pudgy nose," she sniffed. "Wouldn't that show him?" "I'm sure it would," he smiled, and headed for the door.

"Oh, don't you want breakfast? I have a little oatmeal left….."

"I'm fine, Mrs. Hastings," he assured her. "You eat, though. I'll be back as soon as I can."

She started to protest as he stepped off the back porch, only he didn't walk toward the path Henry used. He began to rise into the air right off the top step, and was soon high over the trees even as she stood watching with hugely rounded eyes.

"Oh…..my," she managed to choke out as she stared at the impossible, and thought about how normal all of that must be to people in his world.

"His world," she murmured, and had a thought.

_**S**_

Clark stayed low, just above the trees at times, and lower still when over a meadow. He scanned the ground beneath him with varying degrees of penetration as he focused his x-ray vision to check for anything that might explain the banker's interest. Or Laura Hastings' husband's activities before his death.

He circled the back twenty acres of her place twice, but saw nothing. He was headed back toward the house when he had a thought, and focused on the house itself. He swept his sharp gaze through the old farmhouse, but saw nothing.

Until he checked the basement.

He landed just inside the tree line, not wanting to frighten the woman, and walked past the barn, and over to the house. She was pulling open the door even as he lifted his hand to knock. "Did you find….?" "There's nothing out there," he told her, sweeping his hand out toward the mostly forested land. "Just a typical plot of ground. No treasure. No oil. Nothing of intrinsic value beyond the land itself."

"Oh," the woman sagged visibly, and he felt bad at his tact for a moment.

"However," he added, giving her a smile. "If you'll let me into your basement, I think I can show you something you might like."

"My….basement?

"We don't have a basement."

"Yes, you do," he nodded, and she stood back as she shook her head again.

"You're welcome to look, but we really don't have….."

"Do you mind," he asked. "I'm going to have to open this wall," he told her, pausing before her old china hutch, and looking back at her.

"How could you know….? Oh, right," she blushed, shaking her head at herself. "Sure, go ahead.

"_Clark_," she stressed.

He easily pulled the hutch out from the wall, then used a controlled fist to smash into the brick façade behind the hutch to start pulling down the wall. A short time later, she had a mound of old brick in the middle of her kitchen, and there was a hidden door exposed that was bolted, and locked with an old metal padlock.

"Oh, my," Laura murmured. "Oh, my. This is what Henry was looking for all along, wasn't it," she asked.

"I couldn't say, but I'd guess it was," he added as he easily pulled off the lock, snapping the hasp like a brittle twig.

She stared at the casual display of strength as he pulled open the warped wooden door that creaked on ancient hinges almost rusted through. A dark hole stared back at them from behind the door. A hole that obviously led down into the depths of the ground.

"A….A basement," she exclaimed. "You were right."

"Do you want to come with me," he asked. "Or should I just bring it up?"

"It," she asked.

"I thought you might like a surprise," he smiled.

"I'm not sure I could take another one just now. _Clark,_" she stressed his name again.

"All right. Let's just say, you've got a storehouse down there full of civil war weapons, memorabilia, and about twenty million in gold bars that would make any historian, or treasure hunter, drool with envy."

"Oh, my," she gasped, sitting down on a chair near her table, almost falling over as it was one with a wobbly leg. "Twenty…..? Twenty….._million_?"

"I would gauge it close to that. I'm sure such things are worth about the same here as they are in my world, since they are relatively close to the same in such matters.

"But I wouldn't dismiss the memorabilia. Some museums would pay a small fortune for the weapons, documents, and other things cached down there."

"Oh, my," she gasped again. Then laughed. "Bart is going to be spitting nails when I show up with this find," she told him.

"I'd get in touch with a museum at once," she was told. "To ensure you get the credit for the find. And the rights to the cache."

"You're right. Bart's just ornery enough to try to steal it if I wait too long."

"Do you want to call someone now?" "I would. If I had a phone," she grimaced.

"Then you should drive into town, and make your calls at once. I'll close this back up after I get you a few things to prove your claim, and then you can go."

"Oh. Oh, and I had an idea that might help you," she said.

"Well, what you told me about that scientist made sense," he reminded her. "I thought I'd look up that fellow on the internet, as you suggested."

"Well, I also thought….if you really are…..well, like the comics my son read, I thought…..

"Well, what if a current issue might have something in it that explained what you're doing here?"

He looked at her, and nodded. "That's a possibility worth checking out, Mrs. Hastings. Now, excuse me. I won't be a minute," he told her, and vanished into the darkness.

"Wait. Don't you need a…..flashlight," she asked belatedly as he reappeared, covered in dust, and cobwebs, but holding a small, black satchel, an old cap-and-ball pistol, and a bar of dull, yellow metal.

"Stamped with the seal of the Confederacy," he told her, setting the heavy bar on the wooden table that actually groaned under its weight.

"What's in the pouch," she asked, looking at the desiccated leather satchel.

"Dispatches, and orders from General Robert E. Lee to a fellow named Ames, advising him to bury everything before the Union marched into this region," he told her. "Enough to authenticate your find, and prove it's value."

She stared at the bar. "I just wish Henry could have lived to see this," she told him as he began to set the bricks back in place at dizzying speed after pulling the protesting door back into place with ease. He then pushed the hutch back against the wall, leaving only a small pile of mortar dust on the floor to betray their exploration.

She swept it up without needing to be told, and tossed it into the bin as he nodded at her as he set the old, heavy lock on the satchel. "Oh, no. We'll have to go into the city to see the people, and places we both need to contact. Our small town won't be large enough, and I don't have enough gas….."

"Why don't I give you a ride," he told her with a grin.

"A….ride?"

"Let's go," he told her.

_To Be Continued_………….


	2. Chapter 2

I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy.

_**SUPER**_

**Part 2**

Laura only regained her breath after he set the old car down a few blocks from the service station outside the city that was over a hundred and fifty miles from her home. Her watch told her they had flown that distance in mere minutes. She had just enough cash left to get half a tank of gas to get into the city, and see the people she needed to see.

The director at the museum had been a bit snobbish at first, until she opened the brown paper sack she carried, and pulled out the satchel, pistol, and broken lock. When he pawed though the papers, journals, and dispatches, he almost whimpered like a child at Christmas who wasn't sure which gift to open first.

"And….there's more," he asked when he looked up at last to eye her.

She knew what he thought she looked like. A dowdy old housewife. A nobody.

She smiled smugly, and nodded. "Much, _much_ more," she told him, remembering all Clark had described for her to entice the man. "Weapons, uniforms. Various items a soldier might carry with him, and all in quite good shape," she added purposely.

"This is…..I mean, it's……Well, I believe we can take it off your hands for……"

"Before you make an offer, I wouldn't mind help with another matter."

"What…..What other matter," the gaunt, spectacled director of the museum asked as he looked down at the satchel as if fearing it might vanish if he let it out of his sight.

"I'd have to ask you to come outside for that. I couldn't carry it with me, so I left it in the car."

Silas Gardner didn't have a clue as to what else she might have out there. Still, he was beyond any pretenses of being not interested. This woman had just dropped the find of the century into his lap, and if she had more…..

"All right. Shall we leave this….?"

"I'll keep it with me," she smiled at him as she slid the papers back into the satchel. "We wouldn't want anything to get lost," she told him with a knowing smile as he couldn't help but stare at the satchel as she carried it out with her.

He said nothing as he followed her out of the museum, out to the parking lot, and to the oldest, most disreputable-looking vehicle he had seen in some time. Standing next to it was a tall, dark-haired man who was an absolute monster. He looked not unlike one of those overgrown men his son watched on wrestling.

"Ah, Mrs. Hastings," he murmured a bit anxiously, conscious of his own slight stature as they approached this tall man who looked quite powerful.

"Clark is a friend, Mr. Gardner," she told him. "Now, this is what I was speaking of," she added in the same breath. "I was hoping you could tell me who best to contact concerning how to handle it."

She went to the trunk, and opened the hatch with a dull creak as she pried it up. Pulling back a burlap feed sack, she stood back, and gestured.

"Dear God," the older man gasped as he stared at the gold bar. "Is it….?"

"Stamped with the CSA seal," she grinned. "And there's more where it came from."

"And….where is that," he asked anxiously, looking up at her, and then over to Clark.

"Let's just say it's someplace safe, and leave it at that," she told him.

"Oh, my, well…..yes. You should contact the state treasury department. They can best help you dispose of……gold….. But there is also the historical value, and…..oh, my, Mrs. Hastings, I don't think you realize what you have here. You….."

"I have a very good idea," she told him. "And I just want to get enough to save my home.

"So, would this entice you enough to write me a check to go towards that," she asked, holding up the satchel."

"Ordinarily, Mrs. Hastings, I'd have to contact the museum's investors, and the board, and get a consensus, but……I think I can state uncategorically that we would be more than glad to be the ones to handle this find.

"As to remuneration, well, obviously we couldn't give you a value until we surveyed the entire find, but……I can tell you that……I would be more than fair in giving you….say, a fifty thousand dollar deposit to secure our rights to review the find at the least."

"I'll need an invoice, and a cashier's check, if you don't mind. For tax purposes, _and_ my bank's insistence I pay them on time," she smiled as she closed the trunk. She laughed at his expression, adding, "My late husband was an accountant. He taught me a few things."

"Of course. Of course. Just come back to my office," he told her, heading back to the museum trembling with excitement.

"Your….ah, friend, is trustworthy," he asked a bit anxiously once they entered the museum again, glancing back to where he still stood by the car.

"I wouldn't be here at all without him. I doubt there is anyone else on the planet I trust as much as Clark," she told him firmly.

"Ah, well…..that's good. This is….quite a find. Quite a find," he told her with genuine excitement.

_**S**_

"I thought you might want to see this, sir," Anna Graves told the director as she held out a small town paper for him to read.

"_Local Woman Strikes Confederate Gold_," he read, frowning at the dowdy woman on the front page.

"What does this have to do with our mystery man," he demanded.

"Last paragraph, sir," she told him.

"Last paragraph," he grunted, turning the page, and scanning the end the of the article.

"_The site is of inestimable value to historians_….."

"Further down, sir," she pointed.

"_Mrs. Hastings credits her discovery to the aid of a young man known only as Clark. He refused any credit, obviously proving he is one of the last real good Samaritans in this world, claiming he was only doing a job for a woman that took a chance on him_."

"So," he frowned. "This doesn't tell us….."

"Sir, I did a little discreet checking. The woman was bankrupt. About to be evicted from her place when she suddenly takes in a nameless vagrant with no background that I could find, and strikes it rich."

"I repeat, what….?"

"I also went out there a few days ago to poke around. This vagrant also happens to be wearing a blue flannel shirt described from the theft a few weeks ago," she added. "It's a tenuous link at best, but….."

"No pictures," he asked her.

"He wouldn't sit for one. Oddly enough, any camera aimed at him only got ruined film for their efforts. But he looked enough like our flying man to make me suspicious."

James Carter rose from behind his desk, his eyes grim as he grabbed the paper. "Get me a jet ready…."

"Standing by at the airstrip, sir," she told him. "Shall I have the local authorities, or Guard ready for us?

"No," he snapped. "If he can shrug off missiles, and tear jets apart, I doubt a few weekend warriors are going to bother him.

"We need to play this one quiet, and discrete."

"Of course, sir."

_**S**_

"Did the net help," she asked as she looked over at Clark where he continued his web searches on the new wireless laptop she had bought to help him more than herself. For the past ten days, she had watched stuffy men climbing in and out of the hidden basement as they carted out the finds after they photographed every inch of the room before moving so much as a single rifle, or piece of yellowed paper.

Then the treasury people came for the gold, and by the time they gave her a percentage for the find, after taxes, of course, Bart was all but choking on his obvious envy as he could do nothing but gape as she paid off her mortgage, and padded her savings and checking's accounts well into the next century.

Then came the reporters, who insisted on seeing everything, though Clark managed to always be somewhere else most of the time, and avoided the photographers when he was around with a skill he had likely honed in his own world.

Unfortunately, the few funny books she found of his 'character' had nothing about his current extra-dimensional traveling, and so he focused on the net, but was finding it hard to pinpoint anyone of Chinese descent who was studying the use of spatial frequencies.

"Not yet. Considering the insular governments here, however, it's little wonder that not everything is immediately available……"

"What is it," she asked.

"I….I thought I heard the same sound again for a minute," he told her as he lifted his head. "It was pretty faint. Obviously far off, but….."

"Do you think it might be the same source, then?"

"It might be weak, but I know the pitch," he told her as he closed the laptop. "It's the same sound," he told her.

He started for the door, then stopped.

"It's gone again," he sighed.

"If it happened twice, it'll happen again," she assured him as she flipped over the channels she watched now that she had power, and cable back on.

"I'm sure if we're patient……

"Wait, look. This is the same man I told you about," she said, pointing at the brief cameo of an advertisement for a program later that week.

"……can potentially pierce the layers of spatial fabric that quantum physics now tells us lines our universe," the lean, Chinese man in a dark jacket was saying as he stood before a blackboard filled with seemingly arcane formulae.

"Dr. Chang Li," Clark murmured, reading the man's name beneath the screen. "Beijing University."

"That helps, right," she asked, muting the sound as the commercial went on to someone else in a tweed suit explaining the history of research into sound.

"A great deal," he said even as he frowned, and looked up.

"What now," she asked.

"A helicopter is coming in low. I think it's headed here.

"It's a government aircraft," he added as he looked back at her.

"I though the treasury was finished assessing all the gold they carried out of here," she smiled. "God knows, I'll never spend all the money I've made off this find even after all the taxes and fees they made me pay.

"Thanks to you," she added, not mentioning that her family had been calling quite regularly in the past few days, all wanting to wish her luck, and less than subtly suggesting investments that she might wish to make.

She had already decided she was going to send each of her children a percentage of her windfall, and live off the rest herself. "Clark," she asked when he glanced up again.

"I don't think it's the Treasury."

"Oh, no. You don't think….?"

"I'll find out soon enough," he told her as the sounds of an approaching helicopter filled her ears now. How he could see and hear so far off was still nothing short of amazing to her, but she was getting used to him by now.

Especially after he helped rebuild her house, car, and fence in days after she bought the necessary materials. He could make a fortune as a handy man if he wanted. Still, she had heard of some late night exploits across the country on the news lately that told her he was far more than just a handy man.

Drunk drivers claiming they were miraculously saved by angels. A little girl lost for three days in the woods north of them suddenly found. Hikers lost in a bad snowstorm in the mountains to the west suddenly waking up at an aid station with no idea how they had gotten there. Lots of peculiar stories, and enough to tell her that Clark obviously didn't sleep anymore than he ate if she was not watching.

"I…..I made something for you," she told him as he stared though the wall. "Just in case," she smiled a bit uneasily, pulling out a small bundle of cloth folded over something else.

"I thought….the way you said you kept losing your shirt, and all….it couldn't hurt…."

He looked at the very realistic copy of his own costume, and smiled. "It's very nice. I think it'd be hard to keep low-key though….."

"I was thinking of what you said before. About being who and what you are wherever you go," she said a bit quietly as the helicopter settled down just outside her main house near the barn.

"You might have a point," he told Laura. "Excuse me a moment," he said, taking the costume from her hands, and vanishing down the hall in a blur of speed. He was back in the next instant, still in his jeans and flannel shirt, but no longer holding the costume.

"I thought….?" He smiled as he pulled back the collar of his shirt, showing the expanse of blue material now covering his broad chest under the flannel shirt.

Laura grinned at him even as someone knocked on her back door.

"Who is it," she asked as they both headed toward the back door.

"Homeland Security, ma'am," the man said. "We'd like to speak to you, if we could."

"Of course," she said as she opened the door.

"And you must be Clark," the bear of a man drawled as he eyed Clark when Laura pushed the door open.

"You know my name," he asked blandly as he stood beside Laura.

"I know your face. Your name is still open to debate," the director of Homeland Security said as the woman behind him stared intently at him, obviously ready to act the moment he made the wrong move.

"My face," Clark echoed.

"We have pictures from a bar on the east coast where you dropped several armed bangers with no more effort than you used to take out three navy jets over the Atlantic."

"That was….a misunderstanding," he told him, not bothering to feign innocence. This man was obviously canny enough to know who he was. Or at least, who he thought he was.

"So you say. Why not come with us? I'm sure the President would love to hear your explanations," he told him curtly.

"Suppose I told you I can't afford to do that? That it's best if no one officially finds out who I am, or that I'm even here?" "Mister, whoever you are, whatever you are, the scenarios I've heard lately surrounding your presence are not good. Not good at all.

"You have our entire military on full alert, looking for your next attack….."

"That was not an attack," he sighed. "I told you, it was a misunderstanding. I wasn't fully in control of my abilities at the time, since I experienced….."

He let the man draw his pistol.

"Now, this might not work on you, but maybe you'd prefer you didn't get this woman shot," James growled.

"All right," Clark growled himself. "That's enough."

Before the agents could blink, they were both disarmed, and Clark dropped two shapeless lumps of metal on the kitchen table as he stepped back, and pointed to the chairs. "Sit," he ordered them.

James stared hard at the metal paperweights, but before he could make his own decision, Anna launched a potentially devastating kick at the man. James knew his agent was a skilled martial artist. The way she went down, howling as she clutched at her ankle, told him all he needed to know.

"I'll get some alcohol," Laura told the woman now sitting on the floor where she landed with a chagrined expression. "It'll help the swelling."

"Sit," Clark told James again. "And I'll try to satisfy you without starting something neither of us wants to happen."

James carefully sat down. The big man said nothing as the agent reached out to heft his crushed semi automatic.

"Realistically, there should be no way in hell you could possibly do this."

"True. Yet you know I stopped armed gunmen, and faced down your fighter jets. Why come here alone, without backup?" "How do you know we did," Anna hissed, still holding her ankle as she sat on the floor.

He smiled thinly as he glanced down at her. "Don't worry. It's not broken. It's just a light sprain. You'll be fine in a few days."

"How do you know….?" "Trust him, sweetie," Laura returned with alcohol, and an elastic bandage for her. "Clark here is a man of many talents."

"So we have seen. I take it you dug up that buried treasure for Mrs. Hastings?" "It was on her property," he shrugged.

"All right. We obviously can't compel you. We damn sure can't _dent_ you," James glowered. "So just what are you willing to tell us?" "You aren't going to believe me, but I ask you keep an open mind until I finish."

"All right. Shoot," he said as Laura helped Anna to a chair.

"You're…..kidding," Anna finally said, being the one to speak fifteen minutes later after he had finished telling them an abbreviated version of how he had ended up on their world.

"I don't think he is," James told her. "So….You're the _Man of Steel _from another dimension where comic heroes are real?"

"I would think you've seen enough to convince you that I am telling you the truth," he told the man.

"So, let's say I accept your claim. How do you think it'll look if I go back to D.C., and tell my commander-in-chief that _Superman_ crossed over from his dimension into ours? That he's real, and living right here in our world now?" "I can guess," Clark told him quietly. "However, it's not my intent to set up house here. I'm still looking for a way to get back home.

"And I think it's connected to a Chinese scientist's sonic experiments that may have brought me here in the first place."

"Right," Anna drawled. "Like we're going to swallow that one."

Clark sighed. "Whatever you think, all that really concerns me is trying to get back to my world. To my home."

James studied him across the table where he had sit down after a few moments as he had spoke to him with such quiet assurance that he had found himself believing every unbelievable word. Yet he had seen, or rather experienced the man's speed and strength firsthand. He had not even seen him snatch that gun from his hand, yet he had. Just as he had seen him crush it into a lump of useless metal.

Along with Anna's favored magnum.

"Suppose I believe you," he said, holding up a hand to quiet Anna's outburst. "Just what do you expect me to do?

"I have people to answer to myself, and they aren't going to stop looking for you even if I went back and told them God _Himself_ was here just looking around."

Clark sighed.

"I have a lead on the scientist that may have inadvertently brought me here," he told him. "I plan on going to see him very soon. If he can't help. Or is unable to immediately help me, then I'll speak with any of your superiors you want on _my _terms. "But only on my terms."

"And what are your terms," Anna asked rather nastily after Laura had finished wrapping her ankle, and even produced an old cane for her to use.

Clark smiled. "I'm not a weapon, nor will I be used as one.

"However, I do want to assure you, I'm not here to hurt anyone."

"Tell that to the three pilots you downed."

"As I said, that was inadvertent. Apparently, my power levels are somewhat elevated in this dimension, and I had to readjust my control over them.

"Still, if they hadn't attacked me without provocation, I never would have faced them at all. I do believe I was over international waters at the time, after all."

Anna opened her mouth, but said nothing as she looked at James.

"He's got us there. Still, with the current threat from extremists we're facing these days, we have to be careful," he added. "So you can perhaps understand that our military is a bit edgy when it comes to strange flying phenomena in our skies."

"Are you buying this…..?" "Then, too, there is the matter of certain thefts in your wake," he added.

"Yes, I regret that, but…..I couldn't too well run about naked," he said. "That would have drawn even more attention than I wanted.

"And once I earned a few dollars, I discreetly dropped off payment for anything I 'borrowed' from people along the way."

"Hmmph," Anna snorted.

"Ease up, Agent Graves. All things considered, I think we're going to have to take his word."

"I can vouch for him," Laura said, turning from the teapot where she had made tea for them, though only she was drinking it. "Clark is an honest man, and a kind one, too.

"I happen to know he's saved….."

Clark's expression stopped her, and Laura smiled, amending her words so she finished rather lamely, "He's saved a few people who needed help right around here."

Silence fell over the small group, and James kept staring at the apparent extra-dimensional hero without saying anything. Several times he would start to speak, but only shook his head. Anna merely fumed, obviously not liking the situation at all.

Which was when his cell rang.

The shrill tone startled the three of them, though Clark didn't react. James smiled ruefully, then pulled out the cell phone, saying needlessly, "It's for me.

"Carter," he spoke brusquely as he answered the phone.

"What? When? You're certain? We have confirmation? Damn," he growled, and looked at Clark. "All right. We're on our way back.

"In the meantime, evacuate the immediate area, but don't issue any statements. Say nothing. We don't want a panic.

"Get Douglas and the rest of our people in there with the necessary equipment, and for God's sake, don't let anyone in the press hear about this.

"No. No. I'm headed there now. I'm three hours out. Hopefully, I won't get there too late."

He hung up, and eyed Clark.

"I don't suppose….." "Let your agent return with your pilot. I'll carry you to Norfolk," he told him grimly.

"You heard….?"

Clark only smiled as Laura told James, "He does have very good hearing. Or didn't you ever read his stories, Agent Carter?" He rose to his feet, and nodded. "All right. You know what we're facing. If you're willing to do this, we have no time to waste.

"Anna….."

"What is it, sir," she asked anxiously, levering herself to her feet with the cane, though she obviously hated the use of it.

"A homegrown terrorist cell has hidden a pocket nuke in Norfolk near the naval base. Our agent in an area mosque just sent the tip after every Muslim in the region was told to get out fast. If it goes off……"

"D.C., and most of the east coast is contaminated even if it isn't outright destroyed," she gasped in horror.

"Which means, we'd better move fast," he said, looking at Clark. "So, if you really can….."

"Let's go," Clark told him, and headed for the door ahead of Anna and Laura.

"Not showing off yet," Laura asked him.

Clark chuckled, then looked down at his civilian clothes. "You're right. I'd better change, or I'll just shred these again."

He seemed to blur, and then the two agents gaped as Laura grinned at the powerfully built man in the blue and red costume with a characteristic sigil upon his broad chest now standing before them.

"You have got to be kidding me," Anna sputtered as she stared at the colorful costume, complete with a distinctive red cape.

"Just get back to the office ASAP," James told her "We may need to move on other locations. I'll be in touch."

"Ready," Clark asked him, stepping up beside the man.

"Part of me is still wondering if you aren't just delusionaaaaaaaalllllllllll," James howled as a powerful arm locked around him, and suddenly he was airborne, with the wind howling past his ears as they arched high into the sky, and turned northeast.

"Holy shit," the experienced agent exclaimed in almost childlike wonder. "You're for real!"

"That is what I've been telling you," Clark told him calmly as he headed toward the endangered city.

"I am never going to be able to explain you," he added as he tried very hard not to look at the ground far below them that swam dizzily past in such a blur he couldn't tell how fast they were going.

"I'll change back to civvies when we land. Just pass me off as an outside expert if someone asks."

"You really think you can help find the bomb in time," he asked.

"If it's not hidden inside lead, I'll find it," he told him as they began to angle downward toward a distinctive skyline James Carter knew more than passing well. If this guy was a hoax, he was a very convincing hoax. Because he knew they had just crossed over three thousand miles in less than five minutes.

"Damn, you are fast," he rasped, still sucking air into his lungs as he watched the hero blur slightly before he reappeared in denim and flannel once more, his colorful costume hidden beneath his plain façade.

"I actually kept my speed down so the air friction wouldn't endanger you," he said, heading out of the alley behind the mall where they had landed.

"Why land here," James asked as they headed toward the nearest entrance. "The naval base is ten miles south of here."

"I think the bomb is here," he told him.

"What," James gasped. "Here? In a mall?" "I picked up some weird emanations when I scanned the city on our approach," he told him. "They might have planted more than one device, but I suspect there is definitely something here."

"All right. Lead me to it," James told him, flashing his credentials when one of the mall security guards stepped in front of them to black their passage when a metal detector went off.

"Homeland Security," the mall cop frowned at the badge. "Is something going down here," he asked in a shrill voice.

"Just keep your mouth shut, and follow us," James snapped.

"Which way," he asked Clark.

"This way," he said, going to the underground level where the crowds milled about the escalators, slowing them.

"Jesus," the mall guard was muttering. "Shouldn't we be calling someone? I mean….?" "The experts are here, Walter," James told the man, reading his name badge. "Just follow us in case we need help clearing some area."

"Down this way," Clark told him as he led them through the crowded shopping lanes, and into a maintenance corridor.

"How does he know where to…..

"Ohmigod," Walter paled, looking all the world as if he were going to have a heart attack when Clark ripped open a locked, metal security door to expose a ticking clock attached to a bulky suitcase.

"We have less than a minute," James hissed. "I don't suppose you can name defusing bombs as one of your abilities," he asked Clark as Walker backed away, trying to decide whether to run, call for help, or pass out.

"No time," he said grimly, and lifted the entire case in his arms. "There's over thirty grams of plutonium in here. Enough to level half the city, and contaminate the entire region for centuries."

"What do we…..?

"Oh," James said as a hole appeared in the ceiling overhead as Clark just vanished.

"What the hell was that," Walter squeaked. "What….? How…..?" "It's national security, Walter," James told him curtly, flashing his badge again. "So say nothing to anyone, and you won't spend the next few months in a very small place explaining how you can't keep your mouth shut.

"Understand," he demanded.

"S-S-Sure," Walter croaked, and gave up, and passed out at his feet.

James sighed, feeling rather sympathetic just then as he reached for his cell.

"Carter here. I need a full team at the Highland Mall. Now.

"Just get here," he barked at the confused dispatcher who still thought he was miles away. "We need a follow-up here on a potential threat. Yeah, definitely a potential bomb threat.

"No, it's been diffused. But I need to be sure the area is clean, and ascertain if any evidence was left that might help us find the bombers.

"Never mind," he told the man. "Just scramble the teams. Now."

He hung up, not sure how he could have explained just how he had gotten to the mall without sounding mad. A heartbeat later, Clark stood beside him again, looking quite normal in a slightly worn shirt that looked a bit more ragged than a minute ago His thin was completely gone.

"What did you….."

"I let it explode above the atmosphere. It was the safest way to handle it," Clark told him as casually as if he had just told him he liked cheese on his burgers.

"I take it Walter couldn't take the excitement," he asked with a faint smile as he looked down at the man.

"That could be an understatement. I thought he was going to have a heart attack."

"He's all right. Just shocked, I suspect. His heart looks fine."

"You can tell that, too?"

"I've helped some doctors out a few times over the years," he nodded.

"So, I don't suppose….?"

"I scanned the rest of the city, and the surrounding area on my way back down," he told him casually as two more security guards came down the hall. "I didn't see anything else. I believe this must have been your primary threat."

James stared at him a moment, then nodded. "Thank you," he said somberly.

Clark smiled. "I hear sirens. Maybe it would be best if I left for now."

James looked at him, then at the approaching guards who slowed when he flashed his badge once again. "Maybe you should. Still….."

"You can call me if you need anything else like this, Agent Carter. For now. I'm still working on getting home."

"All right. But….if we need you again….?" "You know where to find me," he said, and before the guards could reach them, he vanished in a blur of speed that stirred some debris, but otherwise left no trace of his passing.

Unless you counted the hole in the roof that went right up to the sky.

Explaining that was going to be tricky.

"Homeland Security, gentleman," he told them. "I need you to cordon off this hall, and keep everyone out until my people get here.

"You might want to get paramedics to check out your friend."

"What's wrong with him," the younger man asked, one hand on his baton, still eyeing his badge uncertainly.

Smart man, he thought privately as he glanced at Walter. "I'm not certain, but there may have been biologicals in the area. He was…..hallucinating right before he passed out.

"Now, get this hall cordoned off," he told them firmly as he backed away from the hall himself. He had no idea if that bomb left any radioactive residue, or not. Either way, he was going to have fun trying to explain how it exploded in space, directly over the mall, after he had found it.

_**S**_

"Dr. Li," the big American asked in perfect Chinese as the researcher turned to find him standing where no one should have been.

"Who are you? How did you get here?" "Actually, Dr. Li," the big man smiled, holding up empty hands. "I believe you brought me here."

"_I_ brought you here," the small, Chinese scientist frowned as he turned from the computer he had switched off to better hide the data he had been reviewing.

"I find that difficult to believe since I don't even know you," he told the man in a three piece navy suit who looked quite immaculate. Too immaculate to have come through the security that kept him a virtual prisoner in his own laboratory.

"Maybe if I explained," Clark suggested, and stepped back as the smaller man stepped forward, an obvious attempt to gauge his intentions, and aggressiveness.

"Why don't you? Before the security forces comes to drag you off to some unpleasant little cell reserved for people that break into places they don't belong."

"That's unlikely.

"Now, I know that you're researching sound frequencies to pierce the spatial barriers between dimensional walls," he told him.

"Old news. And a failed experiment three years ago is hardly a source of interest today. Whoever you are…."

"I don't think the experiment you performed just twenty-three days ago was a failure."

The scientist couldn't keep from betraying his surprise as he blurted, "How did you know….?"

"Dr. Li, I believe your experiment pulled me from my dimension into yours. I was hoping you might be able to reverse the process, and send me home."

"Is this some American joke," he sputtered now. "Listen…..I have been very patient, but I have no time for….."

"Dr. Li, until twenty-three days ago, I was living in another dimension. Another world quite like yours, but with obvious differences.

"Then I heard a sharply-pitched squealing sound, and ended up here on this world. In this dimension."

"And how do you intend to prove this to me," he snorted back in turn.

"I'm not sure, but I can tell you, I heard the same sound again just nine days ago. It helped me trace you once I learned of your experiments, and what you are doing."

"Were doing. I told you, I left those experiments behind over three years ago."

"Then you're still using the same kind of high-frequency sound waves for something else," Clark persisted. "And what you did opened a rift that brought me……"

"Dr. Li, who is this trespasser," a man in uniform leading two guards demanded as the door opened just then.

Clark cursed himself for being so distracted he had not been paying attention to his surroundings. He had not come to start an international incident. He had come seeking help.

"Don't shoot," Clark addressed the men in the same fluent Chinese as two rifles rose to point his way. "I'm not armed."

"You will come with us, American," the officer spat. "And you, Dr. Li, had best come, too. The captain will want to know why you are entertaining strange Americans in your lab after hours."

"I do not even know this madman," Dr. Li told him.

"Come," the officer snapped curtly, pulling a pistol to gesture them both out. "Now."

Clark sighed.

"Dr. Li, if I can prove my claims, will you at least listen to me," he asked.

"You will get your chance to prove yourself to my superiors," the officer sneered. "And you had better be convincing."

Clark sighed again.

"Doctor?" "You do have a one track mind," Chang Li told him grimly. "Only I doubt you're going to be in shape to prove much of anything once the lieutenant has you in his custody."

"So, you are willing to listen," he asked.

"As you wish," Chang nodded as they left the laboratory, and stepped into the starry night beyond the dimly lit building near the edge of the larger university.

"Good.

"Lieutenant, I admire your professionalism, and dedication. Please tell your superiors that I mean your nation no harm, and only wish to speak to the doctor on a matter of personal urgency."

"You are trying my patience," the lieutenant snorted just before the American grabbed his charge, and leapt into the sky.

Right up into the sky.

And kept going.

Lt. Yung gaped as he and his men just stared into the dark sky, not even seeing a silhouette at which to aim. For nine years, he had maintained a spotless record in the ranks in service to his country. Until now, he had managed a flawless, unquestionable record.

Until now.

Now he was not sure he wasn't going mad.

_**S**_

Dr. Chang Li wanted to scream.

He wanted to scream very badly.

Only his breath had caught in his chest a mile back when he was literally scooped off the ground, and he had yet to catch it even as they slowed over the dark expanse he knew had to be the Pacific Ocean beneath them as they hovered in the open air.

"Wh-What are you," he rasped.

"As I said, a misplaced traveler," Clark smiled grimly. "I am not here to undermine your nation, or steal your work.

"I simply want to find out if it was your work that brought me here, and if it can get me home."

Dr. Li was not sure he wasn't hallucinating. He was, however, an extremely practical man.

"Whoever you are, if you can do these things……Go back and get my wife, and carry us to America. If you will do this, I will do anything you wish."

"You do not want to return to China," he frowned.

"My government has been trying to turn my research into a weapon for over three years," the scientist told him grimly. "If you saw anything on your American television, it was propaganda meant to deceive the West."

"I see," he murmured, still holding the man over the ocean, looking back the way he had come. "And will your wife cause any trouble if we go back for her? I am fast, but I would prefer not to alert your government."

"My wife was educated in London, and lived in Hong Kong when it was still free. We would both prefer to live in a free society where our work is not automatically turned into weapons of destruction."

"What of your laboratory? Your work there?" "Window dressing. I've kept my superiors at bay with false progress for three years now. I was getting desperate of late, as they have been getting quite insistent over my lack of progress. The tests you mentioned were attempts to forestall their suspicion.

"Still, there is nothing there of any real value. All my real work is here," he said, pointing at his head. "It's the only computer the Party cannot yet hack," he said grimly.

"You remind me of a friend of mine," Clark smiled.

"Tell me one thing, American. Do all people fly in this dimension of yours?" Clark couldn't help but chuckle at the absolute wonder in the man's voice. "No, not everyone. But….there are some very powerful beings there."

"Incredible," Chang murmured.

"So, where do we find your wife, doctor," he asked.

"Back at the university," he smiled grimly. "The physics lab in the same building where you found me. On the top floor. Regretfully, it is also heavily guarded."

"Hmmm. Perhaps I should put you someplace safe so I can focus on getting her out without worrying about you, too."

"A wise plan. I'll write you a note so she will not be alarmed. But where will you….?"

_**S**_

Chang prowled the secluded Japanese beach anxiously as he counted the minutes since he had been set down. He had pulled a scrap of paper from a notebook in his lab coat pocket, and written a quick note to his wife to trust the bearer. He couldn't help but start thinking of all the things that might go wrong as soon as the man left him alone on the dark, isolated beach.

First of all, he was a Chinese citizen with no papers on foreign soil. Hostile foreign soil, when it came to that.

Then he realized Alicia might be in danger if the army went after her once he had vanished, thinking she might know something regarding his work. Or his escape. Unusual as it was considering the strange man's abilities.

He wondered if the man could pull off yet another miraculous escape despite his gift of flight, and wondered what would happen if they caught him indoors, away from open skies. What would he do if they forced him to reveal where he was, and where he had come from? What would that mean for his work to date if the Party thought they could open doors to whole new worlds? Worlds to claim, and plunder.

Yet if they did open those doors, how could they manage these powerful beings the stranger claimed lived there?

Would the Party even care?

Did he? All that filled his mind just then was….."

"Chang," a soft, melodious voice called to him.

"Allie," he called back, using her pet name for his half British wife who had chosen to stay and live with him in China after Hong Kong had reverted to China's control.

She smiled hugely, and ran across the beach to him. "You will not believe it. The man you sent…"

"I know. He flies. He is from another dimension, and….."

"He does more than fly," she told him.

"He tore the bars from my window apart as if he only snapped twigs. He set fire to the dangerous work we left behind with only his eyes. He is…..a superman!"

"Super….man," Chang murmured as the big man approached them from where he had landed, setting his wife down to give them a moment.

He shook his head. "It cannot be," he frowned, looking hard at the man before him.

"I try not to flaunt the cape," he told the doctor, having overheard them, and realizing what the man's surprised discernment was as he eyed him anew. "It would be hard to explain in this world."

"You are….a comic superhero? Yet….You are real?" "In my world, which is quite real, heroes are the norm," he told the couple.

"A dimension of real heroes? Of…..super humans," Alicia Li exclaimed. "Wondrous. Yet how did you come to this world? Chang's device was not meant to….."

"Later. We should leave before someone tracks us here," Chang told her anxiously. "For surely even you can be tracked by radar," he asked.

"It depends on how slow I'm moving. And to keep you safe, I'll have to go slower than usual," he told them.

"Still, if we stay low, we can keep under most radar," he told them.

"You will take us to America," Alicia asked.

"Yes. I believe I have a place where you can stay for now until you can gain sanctuary."

"I still do not know how our work can aid you, or how it could have brought you here, but if it is possible, we will do whatever we can for you," Chang told him solemnly.

"I appreciate that," he told him, and stepped closer to the couple.

"Just hold tight, and we'll be in America in no time at all," he promised as he lifted them up in his arms.

"Free," Chang murmured. "We are finally free."

Then they were airborne again, and headed due east across the ocean just a few feet from the waves that moved below them. They moved so fast, the water itself was a blur, and several times Clark angled away from ships he spotted along the way. Then he was over the west coast of America, and headed inland.

"Incredible," Alicia said as she glanced at her luminous watch. "It's only been twenty minutes, and we are already in America."

"I had to travel slower than usual to keep from hurting you," Clark told them.

"Of course. Air friction at any high rate of speed would be enough to rip the flesh from our bones, if not cook us," Chang realized. "Yet you are able to survive higher rates of speed?"

"Here we are," he told them, ignoring the question as he slowed, and landed near a large barn just behind a dark house.

"We will be safe here," Alicia asked him as she tested her trembling legs once they were set down again.

"Yes. I've been staying here myself, and I'm sure the woman that lives here won't mind you staying until I can contact someone in the government to help you gain asylum.

"In the meantime, we need to discuss your work, Dr. Li," he added as he led them to the back door of the house.

"Of course. Of course. Although, to be honest, I am still at a loss to understand how it did what you think it did."

_**S**_

"You really are full of surprises," James said as he turned from his car to stare at Clark, now clad in a modest suit.

"So I've been told."

"You wouldn't happen to know why the Chinese are screaming at the White House this week, would you?

"Something about super weapons, and secret experiments being conducted on their shores?"

"I do need to speak with you about something related," Clark admitted.

"Get in. You can brief me on the way to White House. I'm supposed to be getting briefed on the entire fiasco myself, so I can at least get some firsthand Intel before I show up."

Clark climbed into the passenger seat after a moment's thought, and buckled his seat belt as James climbed in, and eyed him.

"It is the law here, too, isn't it," he asked as James slowly buckled his lap belt.

"So it is.

"Now, what's the scoop, as you reporters like to say."

"Not in some time," Clark smiled faintly.

"Right," he nodded, not bothering to admit he had been studying his kid's comics of late. Especially concerning a certain Kryptonian he had never really paid much attention to as a kid. He was more the intellectual type that favored detectives like Holmes, or Borroughs' creations.

It truly worried him if this guy really could do half the things the costumed hero in the comics could do. Especially since they didn't have any magic, or Kryptonite readily available. Apparently, they were the only things that could even slow this guy down if he got down to business.

"So? China," James asked, shaking off his own grim musings.

"Right. I tracked down Chang Li, and his wife. Scientists that were being forced to use their research on sonic theory to create a weapon.

"It's my belief this weapon somehow opened a rift to my world, and pulled me through when he tested it. It is my hope, however, it can do it again in reverse and send me home.

"That's only part of the problem."

"Only part?" "Yes. The Li's felt the potential weapon was….immoral, and so were using smoke and mirrors, scientifically speaking, to try to stall their own government, and military. Still, whatever they did use a month ago was apparently enough to get me here. That implies some very serious power, and that isn't good.

"When I went there to speak to them about getting home, they asked me for asylum. So I brought them back with me."

James groaned.

"You know, I've been dancing around you since we first found you at Mrs. Hastings' place. So far, we've managed to write you off as a hallucination to those outside the Department.

"But, now, I'm going to have to ask you accompany me to see the President. Only you can explain this, and how serious it is for all of us."

Clark sat quietly beside him for a moment, then nodded. "All right, fair enough.

"If I do, though, I'd ask if you do what you can for the Li's?" "Even if they can't help you get home," he asked.

"Even if," Clark nodded as he answered without hesitation.

"All right. I can't make those kinds of promises, but I'll do whatever I can to help them get asylum. His academic standing should help, of course," he added. "Li is a big name in almost any scientific arena.

"So, where have you stashed them?"

"Laura's looking after them just now."

"Naturally. Taken a liking to that woman, haven't you?" "She reminds me of my own mother."

"I didn't think you knew your mother. Sent to Earth as a baby, and all that."

"Been reading up on me," Clark asked with a tight smile. "Anyway, you should know I consider myself quite human, having been raised by the Kents on my world. And Martha Kent is the nicest woman you'd ever meet.

"That is the mother I was speaking of, Agent Carter."

"Ah, right. I guess I missed that part of the storyline. I've been focused on….."

"I can guess.

"I'm really not here to hurt anyone, though. Or take over any governments. I just want to get home.

"My wife is going to be madder than hell as it is about now."

"That would be….the reporter?"

"Lois," he chuckled. "She's quite a handful, but she's less than understanding about things like this."

"Okay, I can see that.

"Here we are," he said, pulling up to the gate outside a very familiar building.

"Who's with you, sir?"

"Top secret, Sgt. Baker," he told the Marine who eyed Clark after looking at his identification. "You didn't even see him. Understand?"

"Yes, sir, Colonel Carter," he saluted, and gestured for the sentry to open the gate.

"Colonel?" "It's an old rank, but I still hold it in the office I occupy now," James told him.

Clark nodded. "You want to address the President first," he asked as they pulled up in front of the gleaming, white building behind several dark sedans, and a long limousine. "Or shall I?" "I think I'd better introduce you, Clark. Just don't expect to be accepted right off the bat."

"I'm getting used to that here," he sighed.

"Something tells me that you had your share of that even back on your world?" Clark nodded. "All too often."

"Even though you're…..known there? Accepted?" "Not always accepted.

"I would imagine I scare a lot of people just because of what I am, and what I can do. Or what they think I might do. The same as I scare the same sort of people here."

James nodded. "It does worry us when someone shows up with….unlimited potential, and no apparent weaknesses to exploit."

"I have heard that argument before, too."

"And how do you answer it," James asked earnestly.

"Worried about my morality, too, Colonel Carter," he asked frankly. "You wouldn't be the first," he told him when the agent gave him a somber look.

"Let's just say, I share my government's concerns. If what I've heard is true, you literally have no limits. No weaknesses."

"Of course I do," Clark told him. "My own conscience is the most powerful restraint of all."

"Okay, I'll be sure to pull that out if you go ballistic again."

Clark said nothing to that. He wasn't sure if he were referring to the navy jets, or to one of those episodes where someone had controlled him to the detriment of those around him. Either way, he wasn't proud of those events.

"Here we go," Carter told him as he pulled up in front of the most famous building in any world.

_**S**_

"You're joking, right, " the short man with thick drawl asked as he eyed the man beside James Carter who seemed quite at home despite the fact he was surrounded by four secret service agents who kept staring holes into his suit.

"Son," the President chuckled softly when James shook his head. "I've seen some strange things, even before I got high that _one_ time. But I don't think there is anything in this world that can convince me that we have a genuine super-hero standing in the White House, offering to help kick our enemies' collective butts."

"That isn't what I'm offering, Mr. President," Clark spoke up when James seemed at a loss for words.

"Right. Of course not. Because men can't fly, and they damn sure don't tear jets apart with their bare hands. It's just not natural.

"Not at all.

"Now, if whoever put you up to this….."

"Sir, I am quite real, and the primary reason I am here is to keep things from getting…..complicated while I search for a way back to my own world," Clark told him as he stepped forward, easily brushing aside the four men as if they were paper cutouts rather than trained, deadly bodyguards sworn to protect the man in the oval office.

"If you need proof," he told him. "Just ask for something reasonable, and I'll do my best to help settle your mind so we can move on from here without those….complications I would as soon avoid."

"Sir, he really does mean it. Frankly, I doubt we could have stopped him if he didn't want to be stopped, so….why not have him on our side?

"He's the only reason we're still on the East Coast, and not raking through radioactive rubble as it is," he added.

"If you mean that bomb threat last week," the President huffed. "My people assured me that was a bluff, and….."

"It was real. I saw the bomb myself. And if you check with your people, they'll confirm an unplanned atomic explosion above the atmosphere in this region last week at exactly the time the terrorists claimed they were going to nuke Norfolk."

"So….their missile blew up in orbit," the man shrugged.

"It was a dirty bomb, sir," James told him as Clark eyed the short man, and shook his head. "It was big enough to take out this entire area, and leave most of the coast glowing in the dark. Our….visitor carried it into orbit.

"Or do you honestly believe the radicals have missiles capable of reaching us now?" The President fell silent.

"It's just damned difficult to have someone telling me they're a gosh-darn, honest to goodness funny book hero," the man blurted out, dropping into his chair. "If you expect me to believe this isn't some hoax those damnable Democrats cooked up……

"Okay, so you're strong," the President said evenly to his credit as Clark lifted his massive desk in one hand, and held it up over his head.

"And you can…..levy….lorry…..uh, float," he choked as Clark's feet rose off the floor, and he hovered several feet in the air with the desk still in his hand.

"I guess you have the….ah…..the tights, too," the President finally asked as Clark set the desk back down so gently, not even his favorite pen had rolled from its place next to a folder of bills he was ready to veto after the last Congress had tried to rip apart seven years of economic progress.

"I thought it best not to show them in public," Clark told him. "Misunderstandings aside, it could cause…..problems."

"Right," the leader of the nation drawled as he eyed him. "So, you wear the cape, and everything?" "Only when I'm working," Clark told him.

"Well, hell, son. If you don't want to clean our enemies' clocks, just what do you plan on doing for us? That's not saying I really do believe you are what you say, and you aren't trying to put one over on me with this smoke and mirrors thing.

"I mean, you could just be a good magician," the president chuckled with a frozen smile. "Saw one once that could make a whole plane just disappear.

"Poof," the short man said, throwing his hands apart dramatically.

"Sir," James groaned as Clark sighed, and glanced his way.

"Look. How am I supposed to react here, young man? You claim to be…..a super hero right out of the gosh-darned funny books, but you don't plan on doing the right thing for your country."

"I've wasted my time coming here," Clark said grimly as he addressed James. "Haven't I?" "Look, son. Whatever you think you are, I'm sure we can find a nice, quiet place for you……." "You know where to find me," Clark told James. "Do what you can for the Li's. I'll be around."

A heartbeat later he vanished. Or so it seemed, as he moved in what was likely near the speed of light according to what James had found when reviewing the accepted mythology of the world's most famous _fictional _hero. There was a rush of air, papers flew everywhere, and then he was simply gone.

"Uh, what happened," the President frowned in near typical confusion. "Where did he go?" James sighed, and shook his head.

Not one of the four secret service agents so much as uttered a single word.

_**S**_

Clark went straight up, and then flew back down across the continent below him. He had forgotten how fast he was moving, and had lost his coat to air friction by the time he landed in the field behind the barn on Laura's place.

He took off the frayed tie, and stuffed it into a pocket as he headed for the house, hoping to speak with the two Chinese scientists at length now that he had done what he could, and felt satisfied the government likely wasn't going to come looking for him anytime soon, as they had just written him off as a stage magician.

It was almost as bad as those early days in Metropolis. No one had taken him seriously there at first either. They saw the colorful costume, and thought him either a clown, or a madmen.

Until the bullets started bouncing, and the criminals started learning to avoid 'his' city.

Well, most of them.

"Clark," Laura smiled as she turned from hanging up laundry outside the house despite not needing to do so with her new washer and dryer that had been delivered a few weeks ago. "How did things go?"

"I'm a little surprised at how…..foolish your president seems to be despite being the leader of this nation."

"Well, there are those that think the same, or worse.

"Now, his father was a good man. A good President.

"This fellow, though. He's a bit shy in practicality if you ask me. Without his Cabinet, I doubt he would have lasted long enough to be reelected. Thankfully, though, this is his last term, and it's almost over."

She shook her head, then added, "I didn't mean to drone on about politics. You must be hungry. Do you want something to eat?" "No thank you. I wanted to speak with our guests. Hopefully, we can come up with something that might help me get back home before much longer."

His hopes were quickly struck down, though, after he spoke most of the afternoon with Chang, and his wife, reviewing what had happened to him, and how it might relate to their experiment. Things, he realized quite soon, did not look good.

"If the two events are related," Chang told him as he poured over the equations he had been writing down on endless reams of paper as he tried to solve the problem. "Then even if my sonic beam had penetrated the dimensional walls, nothing should have been able to cross over.

"Certainly nothing that could have survived the transition between the multi-layered spatial coordinates without being destroyed by the subatomic collisions within, and between those walls."

"Unless," Alicia pointed out the obvious, "You are speaking of an organism that is inherently invulnerable," she told him as she looked at Clark while checking figures of her own.

"I still cannot guarantee the sonic beam was the root cause in this case."

"Of course it was. What else could have caused a shift of such magnitude? Obviously, his garments were destroyed in the shift through dimensions, but his invulnerable form survived to manifest in our dimension. Still, the unsettling nature of the shift might have been what upset your equilibrium, and weakened your natural control over your abilities when you first arrived, causing the….mishaps you mentioned."

"Theory. Speculation," Chang sighed. "We have nothing to prove….."

"We have our savior," Alicia told him quietly. "He is here, husband. And there is nothing else that can explain that. Or him.

"Most especially since the beam was focused through the planet, and would have contacted the spatial fabric where he would have been in his world, in conjunction to ours."

"That could be possible," he murmured. "Still, it is only a theory, and even if we accept it, I cannot conceive of a way to repeat the experiment to allow him to return.

"Remember, we apparently opened the rift in _his_ plane, and brought him here.

"I have no idea how we could reopen a rift that could let him return _from_ here."

"Perhaps it would be enough if you simply opened the rift," Clark suggested. "Knowing where and when it would open, I could travel through it purposely this time, and….."

"That is the problem," Chang told him.

"According to this…..if we accept this hypothesis, then there are so many variables that we cannot guarantee that we could even open another rift, or that it would lead you back to your world.

"It could conceivably drop you into any one of a billion-billion or so other worlds. None of them guaranteed to be hospitable. Or habitable."

"I see," Clark murmured as he absorbed that cautionary note.

"Think about this," Chang told him. "Sound is a wave, as you know.

"Passing through various elements, or mediums, it can change frequencies, wavelengths, even base composition as it travels from one point to another."

"As in Doppler shifts," he nodded.

"Just so.

"Now, when we fired the hypersonic frequency through the earth's crust, it traveled diagonally through most of the planet, encountering countless elements that likely altered, or influenced the pattern in ways we could never begin to fully predict. By the time it penetrated the surface on the far side of the globe, allegedly opening the rift into your world, it was likely changed far beyond the frequencies that I originally test-fired.

"I….I simply cannot begin to guess what a repeat of such an experiment might do."

"What of the second experiment you did which I heard just after I arrived. I heard the same tonal pitch after I arrived. What were you doing then?"

"It was not so much a repeat, as a…..process of elimination.

"The second frequency burst was to show the party leaders the first was….inconsequential in its scope.

"Not that we knew about you at the time. Still, it didn't have the power, or the reach of the initial test fire."

"Which is why I heard it as a faint noise, rather than a pure sound this time," he realized. "It must have carried through the air, rather than through the crust of the planet."

"Yes, exactly," Chang nodded.

"So, you don't know what could happen if you fired the frequency back through the globe?" "No," the scientist admitted. "But as I said, the result could be so utterly random, that you might well end up…..anywhere. If you could even use it to travel extra-dimensionally as you hope"

Clark nodded. "I understand. Still, I have to try something. I have a home. Family and friends. I cannot simply ignore that. Or them."

"We shall do what we can," Alicia assured him. "But you must realize. All of our original equipment remained in China under military control. Even if we wanted to test the theory again, it would have to be operated from China in any attempt to recreate the experiment, and I do not see our party leaders being too forward in allowing such humanitarian use of what they hoped would be a doomsday weapon to hold back the West."

Clark nodded. "I do understand," he said as he rose from the table where they had covered dozens of pages with their theorems. "Still, this is all I have just now," he told them. "So, for now, I'll have to stick with it."

He walked toward the door even as Laura came in with the empty clothes basket. "How is it going," she asked with a friendly smile.

"Not too well," Alicia admitted for the silent men as Clark stepped back from the door to let her enter the house.

"Well, maybe something will come up," she told him brightly. "I have to say, faith does work wonders sometimes. It kept me going until you showed up, Clark, and I'm sure you are here for a reason beyond helping one, old widow keep her home.

"Maybe you have something to do here that you haven't yet done. Isn't that the way these kinds of things usually go?" He looked down at the woman, and smiled. "Maybe you are right, ma'am. All the same, I don't plan on giving up trying to get home.

"But in the meantime, I suppose I can still do some good."

"Of course you can," she told him. "Just like you've been doing all along.

"You didn't fool me with those late night walks," she grinned as he simply chuckled, and stepped outside to stare at the sky so much like the one he remembered.

_**S**_

Anna Graves cursed as she maneuvered down the hall on crutches, her foot still hurting like hell after trying to kick what felt like a brick wall. No, a _steel_ wall. She had put her weight into that kick, too. Any harder, and she might well have broken her ankle.

"The President," she said as she opened the door to the director's office. "You took that….nut job to see the President?"

"We both thought it was the best move considering."

"It's political suicide. I happen to know the vice president thinks you're too soft for this office anyway. Giving him a lever like this one will only make it easier to oust you.

"Look what happened to all the other presidential favorites since the last elections."

"If I stopped to play the politics of this town instead of doing my job, Anna, we'd never get anywhere. Hell, we certainly wouldn't have stopped that terrorist bomb."

"You know what they're saying," she asked him after she paused for only a moment. "You're nuts. The stress has you slipping.

"There were a few hatchet men discretely suggesting you rigged the explosion in space to make this guy seem authentic. Because so far, apparently to your credit, no one has seen his long underwear in the vicinity of any miraculous rescues."

"I would think you'd appreciate his discretion, and stealth," James drawled.

"I don't trust him. Not one damn bit.

"This whole other-dimensional story seems a bit too….."

"Unreal?" "Convenient," she blurted.

"Convenient," James echoed as he put his pen down, and closed the file he was working on.

"This guy, or whatever he is, shows up with these…._paranormal_ abilities, and we just accept he's this hero from another world that just happens to mirror one of our world's comic book heroes? C'mon, James, don't you find that just a bit…..odd?"

"I find everything odd lately. But there is no denying the fact that guy can do what he does.

"How else would you explain it?" "Hypnosis."

"Hypnosis?"

"I don't know. Super ESP, or something. Didn't the Russians use to have some project working on developing psychic abilities that were supposed to give similar abilities to their agents.

"Only they didn't call it super powers. They called it telekinesis, levitation, and all that. Scientific possibilities.

"Not supermen in long underwear."

"What is it with you," he asked. "Are you that stubborn?"

Anna's expression was more than eloquent.

Finally, after a long pause, she asked, "Do you really believe he's….real? That a world full of heroes could exist, and that they could somehow…..come here?" "After what I've seen. Experienced. Despite all common sense, and the nagging feeling I'm way out on that proverbial limb? Yes. Yes, I do.

"If you want to distance yourself from me, I'll understand. But I think he's real, and alienating this man could be the worse thing we could do under the circumstances.

"I won't say I am not concerned about his apparent abilities, but think….just think of what we could accomplish if he is real, and on our side."

"I have been," she told him finally. "Ever since I ran across this report Simon buried a few weeks ago."

"What report," he frowned.

"It concerns one of the detainees brought in by the navy a few weeks ago after a special op," she told him. "There's a lot of _strangeness_ surrounding it, and I have to wonder if it's not connected to him," she added, handing him a file.

"And I didn't give you that disk," she added as she turned toward the door, graceful despite her crutches. "Nor am I going to be here to not watch you not reading what you don't have."

"Understood, Anna. And thanks."

She said nothing as she left the room.

_TO BE CONTINUED…….._


	3. Chapter 3

I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy.

**SUPER **

**PART 3**

She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, dark hair falling free over strong shoulders, and down an unblemished back of alabaster skin yet curiously unmarked by the hot sun overhead. Clear blue eyes that had had many men lost in their depths from the first glance now stared blankly out over the endless sea, and she sighed quietly, dropping her arms as she leaned back to stare up at the sky.

Other than a few peculiar adornments, the voluptuously rounded woman was naked.

A strangely woven girdle adorned her hips, holding a coil of golden rope that seemed to gleam and glisten as if oiled, or one might even think, glow with an inner light. On her arms, a pair of matching bracelets were locked seamlessly around her wrist. Other than those peculiar adornments, the dark-haired nymph now stretching out on the beach was as naked as the day she was born.

Behind her, a small tropical island stretched out for more than thirty miles in diameter. Large enough to host some animal life that sustained her, but too small to be noticed. Which was why she was literally alone in this world. That was what burdened her just now. As it had since she woke on this strange, desolate patch of ground with no idea how she had gotten here, or what had become of her sisters, her friends, or her world.

In the six months she had counted off since waking on this isolated rock in an endless sea, she had not seen one aircraft. One ship. One sign of life other than the few animals, fish, or vegetation on which she fed to keep herself alive.

She was about to head back into the jungle as the afternoon sun's heat began to fade when she heard a series of dull explosions far overhead. She looked up, frowning, wondering what this portended now. She had come to the belief that the gods were somehow testing her, or had been displeased, and cast her out of her world for reasons known only to them.

Now, after more than six long months of silent contemplation and solitude, she heard sounds that betrayed life existed around her after all. Intelligent life, since only men seemed to be able to create the sounds of explosions like the ones carried to her ears.

She heard a low boom in the wake of the explosions, and knew it was a sonic boom. Several followed in quick succession, indicating something, or someone was moving fast overhead. She focused her eyes on the sky, and caught a glimpse…..just a glimpse, of a thin streak of color against the pale blue sky.

Only one man she knew left such a wake.

Even as he went vertical, climbing faster and higher than any man or machine in existence could manage, she smiled.

If _he_ was here, she was still on her own world after all.

It didn't solve the problem of why she could no longer fly, or why her power seemed….muted. Still, it seemed that she was not alone. Not forsaken.

Full lips stretched into a smile, and she considered her options.

No longer weighted by indecision, or confusion, Diana, princess and heroine, rose to her feet, and turned to the forest behind her. She might not wield her full, godlike powers any longer, but she still possessed a degree of her former might. More than enough for the task before her now once her mind was made up.

She walked up to the nearest tree, and looking up at it, judged it worthy for the chore she had ahead of her. Steeling herself, she reached for the trunk of the fairly straight tree, and pushed. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, but then the tree swayed off center slightly, and fronds overhead swished as the trunk leaned, and tried to straighten, only to lean even more drunkenly as the roots began to stretch, and the base of the trunk itself began to crack.

When it gave, it went down fast, and she wanted to howl with delight of what she had managed. Where once she might have been able to rip the tree right out of the ground, or snap it like a brittle twig, she now had to strain to gain her goal. Still, she had done it. And if she had done it once, she could do it again. Searching out more trees, she began dropping them in methodical succession until she had the raw materials necessary to start building a raft.

For the first time in months, she had a goal.

She had hope.

_**S**_

Hope was fleeting just now despite her good beginning.

Two weeks of hard work making, and outfitting the crude raft had kept her busy, and optimistic. Buoyed by the prospect of finding an ally, and known comrades, she didn't hesitate to launch her raft into the endless ocean, and follow the sun to the west, guessing she must still be somewhere in the Atlantic judging by the stars she watched at night. She drifted with the tide only when she rested, using a rough oar to guide her raft when she was awake, pushing her still more than human stamina to its very brink before she would finally rest each night.

There were no other sightings of her League companion, and secret love in the first week she spent upon the open ocean. She had half hoped, half expected he might fly over again, and spot her with his amazing eyes. She chided herself at the end of every day he did not appear, reminding herself she had been on that island for over six months without so much as a aircraft flying over. In many respects, after all, it was still a very big world.

The second week passed, and she was running low on water she had stored in the many gourds brought from the island, as well as her food which she had rationed as severely as possible without starving herself. She augmented the food with fish from the sea, and wondered if perhaps Arthur was somewhere out there under the great sea he called home. If he were, she never saw him. Not so much a surprise, though, considering how reluctant he remained in approaching the surface world of late.

Not that she could truly blame him.

Then the rain started. Heavy, driving rain that chilled even her, and had her shivering in the gray curtain that seemed to have descended upon her like a curse from the gods. She clung to her raft, shivering violently with cold and fear as even her boundless courage was tested by endless days of the drenching, strength-sapping rain while the storm hammered her for what felt like an eternity. It did not help that she had only a rough breechcloth from a boar she had slain for clothing.

She never knew when it finally stopped. She was sleeping off yet another round of exhaustion after yet another endless night when she woke to a morning sun that warmed her cool flesh, and she found herself laying atop her raft that had been scoured of the last of her provisions by the storm. Even her crude rudder and oar were gone. Not even a single water gourd remained. She was now a helpless prisoner of the sea itself.

Voicing a prayer to Poseidon for his aid, if he had not turned a deaf ear to her as well, she sat on the raft and drifted.

How long she drifted, she was not sure. She only knew that one moment she was thinking she should have remained on her island, and the next she was looking up at a sleek, white ship that was bearing down on her as if aiming at her raft.

She cried out, and dove over the side even as the bow smashed into the side of her raft. She was swept down the side of the vessel by its wake, and would have been carried under the stern, possibly right into the propellers, when she spotted a line dangling from the rail that she instinctively grabbed in both hands. The rush of water deafened her, so she wasn't sure if she had been seen, or if the line had simply been left there. She did not wait to find out.

Using what little strength remained, she pulled herself up the thick rope, not daring to hope as she reached the railing, and heaved herself over to land sprawling on the deck, flat on her back.

She lay there, eyes closed, breathing hard as she regained her breath before finally opening her eyes to look up again. She was startled to find more than a dozen men in uniform staring down at her, some of them openly leering at her, most gaping in simple disbelief. Gathering her strength, she accepted one older man's hand, and got her feet under her.

"Where did you come from, Miss," the man with an officer's rank asked as she tried to decipher the bronze sigils on his collar.

"She climbed right up the probe's lead-line, Admiral Zayer," one of the sailors told the man as she glanced at the rope as if the obvious were just that. Obvious.

"Your ship," she panted, still sucking air into her weary lungs as one sailor finally appeared to hand her a woolen blanket to wrap around her sagging shoulders. "Struck my raft. I am surprised…..you did not see me."

"Must have been a small raft," one of the sailors told her.

"That, and our attention is on a new probe we're….."

"Belay that, mister," the senior officer snapped.

"Seaman," he turned to the man who had brought her blanket. "Take this woman down to sick bay. I want her under guard until we ascertain who she is, and where she came from."

"Aye, sir," the man saluted sharply, and turned to her to gesture with a smile.

"This way, Miss," he grinned. "It is Miss, isn't it?" "It's…..Diana," she told him. "Do you know where I might find Superman just now? It's urgent I find him." "Uh, _Superman_," the sailor frowned as he caught sight of one of his comrades making circling gestures at his temple.

"Someone was in the drink too long," the man next to the sailor making gestures said solemnly.

"Just let the doctor check you out, Miss," the admiral told her. "We'll figure out where you belong, and how you ended up in restricted waters later."

"Restricted….?

"This is open water, isn't it," she frowned.

"Miss, you're smack in the middle of a top secret…."

"Sailor, just do what you're told," the admiral barked as the men began dispersing to return to their respective duties, more than one casting envious glances at their buddy who accompanied the virtually naked goddess to the sick bay.

_**S**_

"What did you find out," Captain Jeremiah Butler asked, painfully aware of the admiral behind him as he received the doctor into his quarters to be briefed about the strange woman that had apparently come right out of the sea to climb up onto the deck of his battleship.

The only reason the admiral was even present on this highly classified run was to oversee the test of the new sonar probe they were testing. If it worked they could detect enemy subs at ranges that would give them plenty of time to evade them, or blow them out of the water if necessary. In the meantime, a strange frequency overload earlier that month was still plaguing the techs as they tried to decipher current tests to see if the overload was a natural, or unnatural occurrence.

It didn't help that they had been put on high alert over something so secret only the admiral knew what was even going on. Secrets were one thing, and they were a part of life on the sea as a naval captain. Only it was damnably hard to run his ship properly when he didn't even know what was going on around him. It was hard on moral, and hard on his command. He disliked either consequence.

"Well, aside from her obvious delusions, she is remarkably healthy. A bit hungry from the amount of chow she wolfed down earlier, but in remarkable physical condition otherwise.

"It's her mental state I'm concerned about, Jerry."

"I know some of the boys said she asked after….Superman?" "That's right. She's convinced she actually knows Superman, _and_ the Justice League.

"Hell, my grandkids still read those funny books, but even I know they're only make believe. I can't begin to imagine what is going on in that head of hers so that she thinks they're real."

"Just who does she say she is, Dr. Helms," Admiral Zayer asked him curtly, not liking what he was hearing. "And more importantly, how did she end up right in the path of our covert test run?" "Well, admiral," the doctor shook his head. "She claims she is Diana. As in Wonder Woman. She said she was marooned somehow on an island east of here, and was making her way back to the States by raft when we ran into her.

"And, sir, I don't think she's faking. She honestly believes she _is_ that cartoon heroine."

"Sans costume, along with any shred of credibility, I noted," Franz Zayer noted with a snort.

"True. She claims she woke on the island with no memory of how she arrived, and no clothing.

"But….here is the peculiar thing. She has this belt on, and these odd bracelets that I can't get off her. And she started getting suspicious enough of my questions that she refused to remove them. I almost didn't get that odd, cordlike rope off her belt, and even then, she grabbed it back before I could have it removed.

"I….was a little concerned about leaving her the thing, fearing she might harm herself. But frankly, she seemed more upset about losing the yellow cord than anything else, so I let her keep it."

"I only saw her wrists. And a ragged hide she was wearing," Franz remarked with another deep scowl that made his weathered features look all the more unfriendly.

"The belt was under her….ah, loincloth.

"Whoever she is, sir," Ian Helms turned to his captain, and longtime friend. "The woman really does believe her delusion, and I have to suspect she's gone through something really bad to have retreated so deeply into her fantasies."

"Put her into the brig. The SP's can handle this once we return to port," Franz decided before Jerry could speak.

"The brig," Jerry frowned. "Admiral Zayer, do you think that is really necessary?" "Need I remind you we are under battle alert status? Not to mention being on a covert mission for naval intelligence, captain?

"Put her in the brig. And keep a constant guard on her."

"Do it, Ian. But keep an eye on her yourself. I don't want her molested, or anything of that sort by some of the clowns we took on board for this mission."

Ian Helms nodded, and left after saluting his captain, and the admiral. Not that he was a stickler for formality with his friend in private. He had already noted the admiral was a real prick, and wasn't giving the ass any ammo to further lampoon Jerry over something as minor as a freaking salute.

_**S**_

Themyscira never seemed so far away to the once powerful Amazon.

Diana counted nine days behind the thick, steel door that once would have been little use in holding her in this tiny cell. Just now, she wasn't sure if she would have been able to even dent it with her vastly reduced strength.

At least they had given her clothing, such as it was. The starched unisex jumpsuit wasn't much for flattering her appearance, but she was at least covered from the gazes of boldly leering men who were far more open than most in eyeing her. They even produced boots that fit relatively well, though they were not what she was used to at all. The doctor, a kindly enough man, had even arranged for her to get a brush from some other woman that must serve on this ship.

The same doctor, however, seemed convinced she was quite mad.

She supposed she couldn't blame him. She didn't have the abilities she once possessed to convince him of her identity. She certainly wasn't looking her best just now, yet she still should have been afforded some dignity as a representative of her homeland to Man's World. Yet he acted as if he had never heard of Paradise Island, or the Amazon race.

Just as he frowned at her every time she mentioned Superman.

She sighed as she stared at the door, wondering what was going on that she should be tried in so odd a fashion. She knew the gods could be petty, and even perverse, but she had proved herself time and again to those deities who had charged her with her mission as surely as her mother had before she first ventured into Man's World.

It worried her she had not been able to get the seriousness of her need to contact the League across to the physician. Surely his ship's security would not be violated by contacting the League. She wondered if something had happened on the political scene that was influencing meta affairs again. She recalled the problems Luthor had thrown at them when he had been President for a time. That had been bad enough, but this was far worse just now. It was as if she were simply being dismissed.

Locked away, and….?

She didn't know. She just knew she didn't like this admiral who was acting as if she were here to personally subvert his mission. Whatever it might be.

Still, all she could do was wait. At least she was fed, and treated fairly. Although the looks of some of those men worried her at times. Especially the big, bald one that had the strange tattoo on the side of his neck. She supposed she could be prejudiced against bald, arrogant men after all the trouble they had had with Lex Luthor over the years, but it was more than that. The way he looked at her violated her on levels she had never considered.

And that was telling for a woman who had been Darkseid's prisoner at one time, and the puppet of a mad god of war another.

She sighed again. Odd, that she would miss her island just now. Not Paradise Island, although she missed it, and especially her sisters. No, she was thinking of where she shad been marooned. Even that uninhabited rock she had left was pleasant enough in its own way compared to this stifling, cramped metal box they had stuffed her into after making sure she was healthy enough to survive it.

The ship seemed to be in constant motion, so she supposed they were still underway, heading wherever it was they were going. They had yet to try questioning her again, or telling her anything since the admiral had showed up just once demanding she tell him who she worked for, and how she had known the location of their test route.

He seemed to be unable to believe she knew nothing of his mission. None of what he mentioned, at any rate.

He stalked off in anger, and ordered her kept under constant guard.

That had been seven days ago.

Three hundred and thirty six hours.

Twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes.

She sighed, stopping her mind from counting seconds.

Sometimes her goddess-inspired knowledge and wisdom could be annoying.

Still, she was more convinced than ever that something very wrong was happening around her.

She just had no clue what it was, or how to proceed.

"Okay, _Princess_," the bald sailor called out sardonically as he came into the brig with his usual swagger, his voice carrying easily through her door. "You ready to get out of here?" She wisely said nothing. This man wasn't one in any authority anyway. He obviously couldn't help her.

The door opened, and the sailor leered at her as he stood back to let four guards enter the small cell. "Don't fight, sweet cheeks," he advised her. "You'd only get hurt."

She frowned as she saw the manacles one of the men held, and rose to her feet, unable to believe they thought they had to chain her.

"I will not submit to the indignity of bonds," she told the man who stopped to stare at her in disbelief.

"Listen, lady, I really don't care if you think you're the fuckin' queen of England. You're a prisoner, and prisoners are transported….."

The man howled every inch of the fourteen feet he flew back through the hatch before slamming into the bulkhead that finally stopped his flight. He barely moaned as he slid down the wall to the deck, unconscious before his feet ever even touched it.

"Jesus H……! Grab her," the bald man spat as he looked back from the unconscious SP as the other three guards reacted too slowly to even keep her inside the cell.

She burst through the men with surprising ease considering her weakened state, slamming them back and away from her with both hands as their close quarters actually worked to her benefit. She rushed down the corridor, slammed the hatch behind her, and used a thick baton taken from one of the men to jam it closed.

A quick climb up the first ladder she reached, and she found herself standing between a half dozen gaping sailors who looked at her, then down the empty hatch, and ran to sound an alarm.

Guessing it was time to get off this ship one way or another, she raced down the upper corridor, took several ladders as her still keen senses led her up toward the strong scent of salt air, and…..if she was not mistaken, land.

The ship was near land.

Men shouted as she emerged from an open door onto the lower deck overlooking the bow, and one man turned to gape as she stood there for a moment, eyes adjusting to the bright sun overhead as klaxons continued to wail, and men shouted conflicting orders at one another.

"Down," she heard someone shout as she simply leapt the safety rail, and dropped to the deck below her. She had caught sight of the land before her, and wherever it was, it had to be better than on a ship full of men who refused to hear her.

Something in that curt command that came from behind her had her spinning just in time to see a man with a rifle aiming at her back. He was going to simply shoot her? In the _back_? Bracelets half hidden by her jumpsuit's stiff cuffs flashed, and she thanked Hera she had not lost all her skills along with most of her powers as she deflected the rounds that would have taken her life, her suit's cuffs shredding as she caught each round with the ease of long practice.

The men around her screamed in alarm as the ricochets bounced wildly among them, and the shooter stopped to gape at her as she wasted no time in using the reprieve. She turned for the rail, and raced for the freedom promised her there.

Four feet from the rail, five men joined forces to block her path. She gathered herself, and leapt right over their heads, and dove into the warm ocean beyond, her body cutting a sleek path through the water as powerful limbs carried her quickly, and surely toward land.

Unfortunately, she realized belatedly she had not thought that far ahead. Even as she came out of the surf, she found herself surrounded by nearly twenty armed men in uniform as she rose from the surf, dripping water and breathless as she found a grim smile stretching her lips as she faced the soldiers in drab uniforms.

"So," she said somberly as she walked purposely toward the men, using the lull to catch her breath, and measure her reserves. "It is a battle you seek? Then do as you must, for so shall I." "Is this woman nuts," one of them asked as she faced them with grim determination.

"Psycho, or spy, we take her alive," the man with sergeant's stripes ordered as he raised a small pistol.

"Now, lady, hands up, and….."

The noncom's orders were lost in his shout as she lunged forward, grabbing him by the collar to fling him around to clear a path through the men around her. She broke through the line, and was ready to race for the nearby road, and the town beyond, when she felt something sharp pierce her lower back.

The electrical charge that stole her strength and will also sent her face first into the sand, completely unconscious.

"This bitch is nuts," one of the men growled as he toed her with a boot after she went down, his rifle trained on her skull all the same.

"She's strong as a mule, too," the sergeant spat blood as he came up behind him. "Someone get shackles on her, and pronto. The _heavy_ ones. We won't be taking any chances with her. The navy boys say she could be some kind of spy.

"We'll let the men in charge figure it out."

"They really gonna stick her in with those ragheads," one of the soldiers asked as they surrounded the unconscious woman being cuffed hand and foot before she was lifted to be dropped into a nearby jeep between two guards with tasers aimed pointblank at the sergeant's orders.

"I was in Iraq," the sergeant spat. "Some of those women are just as nuts as the men. They'd blow your ass to hell just as quick, too.

"She even twitches, put another ten thousand volts in her ass," he told the MP's. "Make sure the garrison knows to use heavy restraints on this one."

"Will do, Sgt. Molina," one of the men nodded as the jeep started up. By then, a launch from the visiting battleship had reached the shore, and a full admiral stepped off the boat to glare after the prisoner who was being driven up to the prison at Guantanamo.

_**S**_

Clark was still reviewing Chang's latest figures when he heard the familiar sounds of a helicopter approaching. He glanced up, right through the roof, and relaxed. "It's Agent Carter," he told Chang. "The man I told you about," he added.

"Of course. It has been almost two weeks, I began to think we were being overlooked," the scientist said, both of them knowing the news had been filled with tensions rising between America and China over the past month though neither side would say just why.

The two men knew, but remained hopeful when no government liaisons appeared to complicate the idyllic days they were spending. Even now, Alicia was in town with Laura, shopping for things they needed as they made the isolated farm their temporary refuge.

"I'll go meet him," Clark decided as he rose from the chair where they had been reviewing Chang's latest formulae based on ideas they had been batting around for days.

"I shall come with you. I do now wish to appear cowardly before a man that may be our best hope of gaining official asylum."

"Well, he's landing now, so let's go," Clark said as he glanced at the wall again as the sound of the rotors grew louder.

They walked out the front door, past the new porch swing he had hung for Laura, and around the side of the house toward where the pilot was setting down. Chang had to hunch against the rush from the blades, but Clark didn't even feel it as he stood there waiting for the single passenger to climb down from the government vehicle.

It didn't take him long.

James jumped out, signaled the pilot, and then headed right toward them. He didn't look too happy.

"Clark," he nodded. "Dr. Li," he then greeted the Chinese scientist. "Let's talk in the house, shall we?"

"We're alone here," Clark told him.

"We could be seen," James told him pointedly, glancing up. "Spy satellites are getting more powerful all the time."

Clark glanced around, and up, and shook his head. "Nothing in the area, colonel," he said, adopting a solemn lead from the man. "Now, why don't you tell us what's on your mind. You obviously didn't come here to share good news."

"I'm not handing you this," James told him after glancing back at the pilot who was focused on readying the aircraft for liftoff. "I suggest you read it privately, and destroy it.

"And if you…..do anything, I suggest that this time you use the cape we mentioned. Call it….a professional courtesy."

Clark took the file, glanced at it without opening it, and his eyes flared as he looked back at the agent. "Is this real?" "Forgot about those eyes of yours," he said as the still sealed file he had pulled from out of his jacket was suddenly vaporized by an unseen heat source in the same instant the hero held it out.

"And, yes, it's very real."

"Whatever that is about, does it concern me, or my wife," Li asked a little anxiously.

"No, Dr. Li.

"The fact is, the U.S. has maintained complete ignorance of your presence here, or your wish for asylum just as the White House continues to try to play ignorant of the supposed _super weapon _that was allegedly sent onto Chinese soil to….ah, abduct you."

"I see. So, officially, no one is doing anything on behalf of the Chang, or his wife," Clark said grimly. "And….unofficially," he asked pointedly.

"Unofficially, they're hoping the whole thing blows over, because right now, we've got a nut with a nuke in the Middle East threatening to blow up the Iraqi oil fields if we don't evacuate the region as of yesterday.

"Things are getting complicated in the big picture, Clark, and that's about all I can tell you at this point. But whoever you are, and wherever you are from…..I have to give you the benefit of the doubt considering how you have already helped us out.

"That's why I told you about…..that situation."

"There's more to it, isn't there?" "The naval brass is pushing for a discreet, and immediate execution," he said as he nodded. "Someone thinks she's more than she claims, and wants her neutralized before some liberal judge can free her, and send her home to some supposed terrorist cell they're convinced sent her out fishing for top secret information."

"Bruce would love your world," Clark told him. "It would only prove his famed paranoia has a basis in reality after all."

"Bruce," James frowned.

"Never mind," Clark sighed..

"Well, I would have called you, but….I didn't dare leave a path they could use to track this leak through me."

"Thank you for the information, colonel," he said quietly as he turned to the scientist.

"Dr. Li, I think you had best return to the house. I'll be back as soon as I can," he said, headed toward the back of the house.

James stared after him, then headed toward the helicopter after assuring the scientist he was not forgetting him. It was all a matter of timing.

Even as the helicopter rose back into the sky, he saw a colorful blur cut across their path, and vanish over the horizon before he could even blink. He was taking a calculated risk revealing the secret file to the alleged hero, but if he were right, and they did nothing, God help them all if the man found out _after_ they executed a possible friend.

Because somehow, the overly strong female they were holding calling herself simply this Diana, did not sound like an Arab spy. For one, no Arab he knew would use a female in such a position. And what Arab would ask to see _Superman_ on this world?

He had gone with his gut on this one, and that was all he could do for now.

_**S**_

Diana felt a lethargy that went beyond the drugs they kept her filled with after an endless parade of constant abuse, and torture. They used tactics she thought had gone out with the Nazis, and yet none of them broke her. She was an Amazon, and a warrior in her own right. Even with her reduced power, she was still an Amazon. That did not change.

They took her lasso away, but could not remove her enchanted girdle, or bracelets.

They nullified both by weighting her down with chains, and using rifle butts to hammer her into submission along with the rest of the brutal maneuverings the men seemed quite willing to subject her to without compunctions of any sort. If they never raped her, it was simply because they genuinely feared to get too close to her. Even drugged, she still retained some of her strength, and she had broken more than a few bones when some of the men grew too unwary around her.

Now, she knew well enough, they were tired of her resistance. It took little imagination to know what lay ahead of her as she was dragged in chains from her squalid cell before a group of men in dirty robes, and bound to a low stake in front of a bullet-riddled wall. She shook her head in disdain when a man holding a black book asked her if she would like a blindfold.

When the uniformed priest, as her addled mind finally realized he was asked if she had any last requests, she glared at the men before her, and stated, "A sword, so I may at least die like an Amazon."

Not one of the men laughed. Nor did they give her that request.

"All right, father," one of them nodded. "She's headed for hell anyway, so step away, and let's get this over with."

"Brave man, who hides behind others," she spat at the junior officer who never once got within ten feet of her. He was always behind his guards, even with the other prisoners.

The Arabs that were captives here stared in silence at her as they watched the day's 'lesson' being given before them this day. She had little doubt one of these cruel bastards had told them that this was what happened when you were too stubborn. Too proud. She almost felt an affinity for these men of the desert that would not break despite the deprivations and abuse they suffered right alongside her.

Especially as she felt some of them truly were innocent from the prayers she sometimes overheard late at night as she wondered where her own colleagues were, and what had happened to the world she once knew. For surely this could not be the world that once venerated her alongside great men like Superman, or Batman, or even J'onn, that last noble warrior from Mars.

She swallowed hard as her eyes met every last man lifting his rifle to take sight on her chest.

"Great Hera," she murmured faintly in prayer, steeling herself as she heard bolts thrown, and the order given to stand ready. "If I must die this day, make it swift."

"Aim," the officer shouted, and six safeties clicked like thunder in her ears.

"Fire."

The order cut her into her like a lash, which she had felt often enough of late, and she forced herself not to cringe as the sound of gunfire exploded, and she did close her eyes as she waited for the shot that would kill her.

Instead, she heard the telltale whine of ricochets. She felt her breath catch when she looked up, and saw a wide, red cape settling around a powerful body before her. She almost laughed in heartfelt relief as the men shouted in confusion, and she saw several of them not blocked by Clark's broad shoulders dropping suddenly melting weapons.

"Sorry I wasn't here sooner," he told her, turning his back on the men to snap her chains like brittle string. "Are you okay?" "I am now," she smiled weakly. "But….that popinjay has my lasso," she said, gesturing to the lieutenant that had been a bane to her existence the past few weeks.

He turned to face more than a dozen men rushing toward the prison courtyard as the Arabs howled in mad delight at his appearance, and then he raised a single foot. The shockwave of his firm step sent the men sprawling like drunken children who had spent one turn too long on a carousel. He then jumped across the twenty-five feet separating them to snatch the young officer from the ground, and held him up by his collar.

"Where is Diana's lasso," he demanded, giving him little courtesy considering the crime he was to commit here.

"That rope is….is in my office," the man whimpered, a suspicious dampness spreading across his khaki-covered crotch.

"Hold it right there, mister," a burly sergeant appeared just then with a rifle at the head of another dozen armed men as the others still worked to pick themselves up only to find all their arms had all been rendered useless by strangely melted barrels.

"I don't know what circus you came from, or what you think you're doing, but….."

The sergeant howled as his entire rifle glowed white hot before it literally melted from his hands. He barely avoided severe burns as he dropped the stock before the molten metal could flow over unprotected flesh.

"He's some kind of super freak, Sarge," one of the men from the firing squad complained. "I think he's for fucking _real_!"

"Show us to the office," Clark demanded of the officer as he dropped and shoved him forward, Diana close behind him, pride holding her up more than anything else just then.

The guards all backed away from the colorfully clad invader in the bizarrely familiar costume. That he had come for the woman in such dramatic fashion had some questioning her claims anew, but none of them did so aloud. Not one of them didn't doubt someone would be court-martialed for this foul-up, and none of them wanted to be that squeaky wheel. Not after the last round of scapegoats had all ended up doing serious time to cover some brass' ass.

Ten minutes later, Clark led Diana, who now held her lasso in her right hand like a trophy, back out into the compound where the guards at least managed to quiet the other prisoners. The lieutenant was out cold, left dangling from a coat hook in his own closet. Clark eyed the sergeant that tried to reclaim order in the prison, and walked over to the man who stood his ground despite his sore, blistered hands, and obvious unease.

"Treat these men fairly," he told him firmly. "Or I may just come back to see if they truly deserve to be here," he added.

He then lifted Diana into his arms, and launched himself into the sky, his bright red cape fluttering in his wake.

He was gone from sight in but seconds.

"Holy……shit," the sergeant rasped.

"I thought he was make-believe," a lanky soldier drawled as he stared up at the sky where the colorfully clad man had disappeared. "Ain't he?" The sergeant did not answer. He was trying to figure out how to report to his superiors when the inevitable ass-kicking began over this one.

_**S**_

Diana smiled as she turned to see Clark walking toward her holding a silver tiara, once more clad in his usual navy suit he favored when in disguise. The only difference here was that he had foregone the usual glasses he favored back home.

"I found this on your island when I located it," he told her, handing her the distinctive headpiece that was part of her usual costume. "You must have lost it when you landed on that island.

"Dr. Li helped, actually. Knowing his coordinates help me estimate where you were when you materialized on this planet."

"So, we're really not on Earth any more," she asked as she slid her tiara back into place, feeling more natural in spite of the khaki slacks, and pale, blue blouse she now wore thanks to Laura Hastings' generosity.

The tiara helped complete her, and she felt a tingle as the sympathetic magics involved filled her, but she still sensed her powers were yet dangerously low. Far below what they had been.

"No, and yes.

"This is another Earth. An Earth where heroes don't exist. Nor does magic, gods, or apparently aliens, as far as I can tell."

"So, this dimensional gate the Li's were speaking of brought us here. Can it not send us back, Clark?" "I hope so. However, between the political climate, and the scientific uncertainties of the technology involved, Dr. Li is still reluctant to even attempt trying."

She nodded. "I can understand his caution considering the implications his wife discussed with me last night.

"Still, I do not care much for this world. And not just because my powers are so limited here."

"I do understand. Yet, oddly enough, my powers seem…..augmented. Enhanced."

"Perhaps because they are based on scientific principles that are plausible in this realm," she suggested after a moment's thought. "While mine are more magical in nature, originating from the gods as they do."

"Perhaps. I'm just glad you're all right, Diana. To think, you've been here all this time…."

"But…you've been here longer than I have. You've been missing for almost nine years, Clark. People think you either left the planet, or were slain by some enemy."

"Nine….years," he choked. "I've only been here for three months."

"I've been here almost ten months as far as I can tell," she told him in resignation. "And before I was….taken, you had been gone for almost nine years. Time, it seems, flows strangely here. That can't be good for our chances at returning either."

"You mentioned you were on that island over six months when you thought you spotted me," he recalled.

"Yes. I wish I could have attracted your attention then, but you were too high, and going too fast."

"I was distracted, too," he said quietly. "Little wonder I wasn't paying attention."

"I suppose I could have handled things better myself, but….it seemed no one would even listen to me. They only shouted their peculiar questions at me, and….."

"It's all right, Diana. It's over. And there will be an accounting, I promise you."

"While you were out," she interrupted him. "Did you see if…..?"

"I looked. Just as I looked for Smallville.

"There is no Paradise Island on this world. No Amazon race. Just…..a few tiny islands that look to have been left uninhabited for years."

She smiled almost sadly. "I suppose….I could always found a new Themyscira," she suggested wryly.

Clark smiled. "I suppose we may have to consider something along that line if we don't find a way back anytime soon," he admitted.

She looked at him, and smiled back. "Do you think anyone misses us?

"I mean, from my perspective, you were missing nine years. Who knows how long I've been gone in our world."

Clark's smile faded. "You do have the advantage of being virtually immortal, Diana."

"I don't know. Am I immortal in this world, do you think? I've lost a lot of power since waking up….here. "

"I have a theory."

"Now you sound like Bruce," she managed a weak laugh.

"I've had lots of time to think here," he admitted.

"So, what do you think?"

"I think…..you must have barely survived the crossover. I think it drained you doing so. Badly. It may take time for you to recover that lost energy.

"After all, while you were….physically powerful, virtually my equal in ways, you lacked my actual invulnerability. It may have cost you a lot of your energy just to survive the rift, as Dr. Li calls it."

"So, others might have been pulled in, and not survived at all," she realized.

"Possibly, based on what the doctor thinks. But they have only tested the machine three times, twice since I've been here. That must be why you and I are here."

"And the third time?" "He didn't amp the power enough to create a rift. He only ran it long enough to make it look good for his government."

"Another discovery turned toward destructive purposes," she sighed. "I sometimes wonder if there is any hope for Man's World."

"There is always hope, Diana."

"Even now," she asked him, turning to look into his eyes.

"Even now," he stated firmly. "Give yourself time. If my theory is right, you'll recover gradually now that you aren't being….._tried_ so harshly."

Her full lips thinned as he tried to downplay the experiences she had suffered in prison. "I would dearly like to go back there, and….."

"They were following orders. It isn't an excuse, but you can't completely blame those men for what their leaders order. Although, from what I saw, some were….excessive in following those orders.

"I've noticed this world has a different kind of war waging, though.

"Women and children die as easily and often as men in this guerilla war they wage against one another in the name of religion. You can almost understand the West's desire for compromise, or utter control and security, depending on your outlook.

"But to yield to either extreme is to give up what we've spent our entire lives fighting for in our world.

"I'm not ready to give that up," Clark told her. "Not even here."

"Boy scout to the end," she smiled again, boldly taking his nearest hand in her own.

"So I've been told," he said, and gave her hand a light squeeze.

"And I am an Amazon, Clark. A warrior. It isn't in me to yield the fight so easily, either.

"So…..What do we do?" "I expect we're going to be approached very soon by this world's government. You can't just break out of one of their prisons, and expect to fly away untouched.

"Well, figuratively speaking," he chuckled at her expression.

"What will you do when they come?" "I expected them sooner or later, to tell you the truth. I do believe there is a potential friend in their ranks, though, and it'll depend on what he manages to get across to his leaders.

"As to what we do? Maybe your island sanctuary isn't a bad plan.

"I noted some isolated, likely uncharted, islands in the region where Paradise Island should have been, and they would be easily defensible if we wanted to hold out there." "But you aren't talking about just hiding from this world."

"No. I promised the Li's they would be safe when I took them from China. If need be, it might be a good place to operate from, and hide them."

"You can't have just thought of this," she realized.

"No. While I searched your island out, and then went looking for Paradise Island at your behest, I took the liberty of storing some provisions there. Things that might be needed."

"And Mrs. Hastings."

"She is innocent of anything beyond sheltering us. And she's popular among the locals since she's given so much of her wealth to shelters, and charities in the nearby town. I doubt the government would harass her if we weren't here."

"So….Do we leave now, or wait…?"

"We wait to see what their first move is, Diana. We don't react. We don't give them reason to claim self defense.

"We wait, and then we act to whatever decision they make first. It isn't like they can stop me if we have to move fast."

"I just realized. This is actually Bruce's worst nightmare."

"It is," he frowned.

"Not the fascist elements that seem to be growing around us.

"You.

"A world without Kryptonite, _and_ no magic means you're virtually untouchable here. He would hate that."

He looked down at her hand still held in his. "I suppose that is true. But unlike our world, that also means there is no power here than can manipulate, or possess me. That leaves me in complete control, and of my own free will, I wouldn't become the kind of threat he fears."

"No?"

"No," he said firmly. "I wasn't raised that way. You know that."

"I do," she nodded. "They don't."

"I know. I know," he said as they stood in the field beyond the barn where Diana had been walking when he joined her.

For a long time they simply stood quietly, taking comfort in one another's company. Just then, it was them alone in a world that didn't know them. Even when the sun was setting they stood alone, and simply watched. They didn't need to say more. They both knew what they were facing, and knew they could count on one another in whatever lay ahead.

_**S**_

"It's almost sad," Laura said as she turned from the window where the growing darkness hid the unique couple from her eyes as night fell.

"Sad," Chang asked as he looked up from the table where he was listening to a small radio broadcasting the day's news.

"Yes. They are literally strangers on our world, unwelcome, and still likely to end up hunted. Yet back on their world, they were heroes. Champions. Celebrated, and loved."

Alicia shared a solemn expression with her husband, and he nodded. "Yes, I see what you mean, Mrs. Hastings. Unfortunately, every theory, or scenario I conjure to reopen a rift only suggests more danger, or possible death for them, or another who might be inadvertently pulled through the dimensional barriers we pierce."

"Allowing for the unlikely possibility our government would even allow us to try such a venture in the first place," Alicia added.

"True," Chang said Laura turned to the stove to finish the supper she was making for them. Even as she poured water from the spaghetti she had been boiling, the telephone rang, and she scowled, almost missing its former silence when she had been unable to keep up service.

"Hello," she answered as Alicia rose to take over the preparations for her as she went to pick up the receiver on the fourth ring.

"Yes, it is.

"I see. All right. All right. I'll tell them. Yes. Of course. Thank you."

She hung up the phone, her eyes dark with worry as she looked at the Li's.

"Bad news," Alicia finally asked.

"I believe so," she said, and went to the door. Even as she opened it, Clark and Diana entered the kitchen. They both looked as solemn as ever, and she swallowed twice before she finally said, "You had a call."

"I heard," Clark told her as he closed the door behind her.

"What? Why didn't you tell me," Diana asked.

"It's pretty much what we expected.

"Dr. Li," he said to Chang. Then echoed the address as he looked at Alicia. "We need to make a decision."

"What was that call," Chang asked after a moment's pause to study the pair.

"Tell them," Clark told Laura.

"It was that man from homeland security. He said to warn Clark, and Diana," she added with a glance at the Amazon. "That tomorrow, the local Guard has orders to come here, and take you all into custody. By any means necessary."

"What do we do now," Alicia gasped, looking as stricken as that evening Clark had first appeared at her window in her office, ripping open steel bars to gain access to her without tipping off the guard's outside her door.

"We have an option available to us. It is up to you," Clark told them as he looked to Diana, who nodded.

"We have trusted you this far, my friend," Chang told him. "Our lives are in your hands. As is only right, since we both owe you so much. Not only for your aid, but for our transgression in bringing you here in the first place."

"These things happen," Clark smiled blandly as he gestured for them to sit. "I'll tell you what I have planned as we eat. It will be a long night for all of us, and we should be eat, and rest, to face whatever is ahead."

"I agree," Laura told them, and helped sit the rest of the supper she had been making on the table.

She had already noticed that while the Li's ate light, Diana and Clark both ate heartily when allowed, and the food was available. She didn't mind feeding them at all. She also noticed Diana was looking much healthier since her arrival just a day ago when she had seemed pale, thin, and uncertain. She obviously had a superhuman stamina, too, even if it weren't as powerful as Clark's.

"So," Chang, ever practical asked as they began to eat. "What is your plan, my indestructible friend?"

_**S**_

Five helicopters flew around the farmhouse as an entire battalion of men and tanks moved to surround the farm. The orders were to contain, and take captive all those in the house by any means necessary. They were listed as potential security risks, and a genuine threat to the nation, and the President himself had ordered extreme force as necessary.

It seemed that after the female's escape from Guantanamo, the nation's leader demanded Carter brief him on Clark once again. This time paying especially close attention as he finally realized just what kind of threat the otherworldly hero could prove to be if left free. Unfortunately, he refused to listen to James' suggestion that the pair be given certain leniencies and respect that might help sway them to take more active roles in the country's defense without creating open conflict between them.

The vice president himself shot that one down, and his longtime friend and leader of the 'free world' seconded the opinion the generals all but shouted that they were too dangerous to leave free. For the sake of the nation, the pair had to be neutralized. It was felt that if the woman could be retaken, which they felt easy enough based on their earlier reports from the navy, that they could use her as a lever to hold the stronger alien in check.

James could only listen in dismay as they made their plans, and hoped the hero really was as reluctant to battle the people he would have called fellow countrymen in another dimension as he had previously indicated.

What truly concerned him was the Pentagon's insistence they also bring in the Li's after rumors of their research, and the alleged weapon they were working on reached their ears. James, having seen what had apparently resulted from the few test-fires already, did not want to see his own country make the same mistake, and perhaps bring in something far worse than a few lost heroes.

He was on the team that was ordered to go into the house, demanding the illegal aliens, as they were now ironically being described by the powers-that-be, surrendered. He insisted on going in with them, hoping his presence would at least keep things from getting off to a bad start too soon if they saw him. Hopefully, diplomacy might still keep things from escalating into a true fiasco.

_Damn politicians anyway_, he thought as the chopper he rode in on with the first insertion team set down just a few yards from the house. He was the third man off the aircraft, the first two carrying twin machine guns big enough that they would have chewed up the house itself it the men opened up with them. He told the lieutenant to stand down when the man wanted to lead a charge right up to the house.

Cocky weekend warriors, he realized, were hardly the kind of people meant for this kind of work.

"You charge in there, and all you'll do is get someone killed," he told him.

Fortunately, cocky, or not, the lieutenant was not that eager to die, or have any of his men hurt either. He listened, and James walked towards the house alone, hands showing clearly that he was unarmed. He started to knock on the door when it suddenly opened, and Clark came outside to join him.

In full costume. Cape and all.

For some reason, the colorful costume didn't seem quite so silly to him now. Not knowing that man in it was no actor, but a being of unimaginable power. Power enough to rip aircraft apart in mid-flight, or carry pocket nukes up out of the atmosphere in seconds. Power enough to shatter a world, if some of the stories were true.

And his President wanted them to arrest _him_?

"Worst-case scenario, Colonel Carter," Clark spoke first as no less than twenty AR1's lined up on the colorful sigil adorning the broad chest of the man standing beside the former soldier. "Just what does your military expect?"

James studied the powerful man, and nodded, deciding honesty was going to be the best policy here with this man. "They want you detained. Neutralized. Perhaps….directed if you can be made to….see reason.

"Their reason," he stated needlessly as Clark merely stared at him, saying nothing as he seemed to ignore the full battalion of men and machines rumbling into place even as he stood there. "They think threatening your friend Diana, or the Li's will make you see that reason."

"Someone is not very bright, are they, Colonel Carter?" James said nothing as he simply shook his head.

"What will you do?" "That depends. What about the Li's asylum?" "Overlooked, essentially. They want him to design a sonic weapon for us. I think the brass hope to….use it more effectively than the Chinese."

Clark still did not respond.

"I gave them my word they would be safe, colonel," he finally said in a quiet tone.

"I know."

"I try to keep my word, colonel. I am not America's enemy. But, neither am I the enemy of any other man, woman, or child in any nation on this planet.

"I will not interfere with sovereign governments, nor their duly appointed leaders."

"That is good to hear," he said with a rueful smile.

"However," he added, now looking directly at the military forces aligned against the small farm. "Neither will I stand idly by and let innocents be threatened, or used as bargaining chips in this, or any endeavor. Most especially any endeavor pointed against me personally."

"I tried to tell them that, Clark," he told him sincerely.

"I believe you, colonel. Now, go back and tell them one thing more for me."

"Yes," he asked, hoping they would get out of this mad situation without violence after all.

"Tell your leaders the Li's are under my protection now.

"As is Diana, who is both friend, and colleague, as well as an honorable woman. Because I understand the confusion over our presence here, I will not act on what happened to her further than I already have in freeing her," Clark told him.

"Again, however, I will act if attacked. Or if anyone under my protection is attacked."

"I tried to tell them they were wrong in taking this tact," he told him again as Clark stepped off the porch, and dozens of safeties clicked off at the senior officer's simple gesture.

"Clark, I can't do more than what I have now. You have to stand down, or people are going to be hurt. They have orders to use force if necessary to take you and the others."

"So, the military of this allegedly free nation is prepared to fire on an innocent widow's house to accomplish its purposes?"

"I'm afraid so," James finally nodded.

"And your leaders in Washington actually condone this action?" "They ordered it," James said coolly. "You should know that."

"I do. I just wanted you to clarify that for those watching," he said as he turned to the camera hidden just inside the house that was pointed at them, its red transmission light blinking as if in warning.

"It's live," James asked as the captain behind him turned a baleful eye on the door, and saw only then the faint reflection of the camera lens he had missed until now. Or been misdirected by Clark to purposely hold the Q&A session that just left the administration with its collective butt hanging.

"It's a remote. No one else is here, colonel. Just me. And I'm leaving.

"Don't try to follow," he suggested with a wry smile as he began to rise from the ground.

"Freeze, alien," the captain behind James shouted, aiming his pistol at him, forgetting the camera, and thumbing the hammer of his weapon. He had his own doubts about this man's tricks, and was still certain a bullet would do a lot of damage if aimed beyond any possible Kevlar he might be wearing.

Clark shot him a look of utter contempt, and literally vanished as the wind left in the wake of his sudden acceleration almost blew James and the captain both down.

When the captain staggered back, his already taut finger squeezed the trigger of his pistol, and the single shot created a chain-reaction among his men as dozens of men, already on edge, opened fire on the only available target. The house.

"Cease fire. Cease fire, damn it," James howled as he threw himself to the ground to avoid the firepower being emptied into the house.

By the time anyone bothered to listen, let alone heed him, the chagrined captain had picked himself up, and looked at the house riddled with dozens of high velocity rounds. The camera, needless to say, was literally shot to pieces. James sighed, realizing they did not look too good here.

Clark had acted peacefully, blandly stating the obvious, and departing without acting against anyone. In response, the National Guard had just shot an old woman's house full of holes, and looked more than foolish as they searched the farm only to find no one, absolutely no one was even present. Clark had diverted them, letting the others either escape, or covered their absence in the first place.

"Congratulations," James scowled at the captain who was standing by the battalion commander now as they sent teams to investigate the entire farm, out buildings, and all. "You've just captured an old lady's empty house."

Both officers scowled darkly even as the first press trucks began rolling up, along with no less than three news helicopters, all with cameras rolling.

They were definitely going to look bad here, James realized. This Clark was obviously more than just brawn. He had suckered them in from the start, and let them have it with both proverbial barrels. The President was going to have to do some fast talking this time. God only knew where the fallout over this fiasco was going to land. It didn't take much to guess he might just be out of a job very soon.

Still, he couldn't help smirking as he realized that not only had Clark and his people gotten clean away, leaving them with a lot of very touchy questions to answer, he had left them without a clue as to where they might have gone.

Not one clue.

_To Be Continued………_


	4. Chapter 4

I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy.

**SUPER **

**Part 4**

Diana smiled at the house Clark had built for them in less than a day.

The low, but long ranch structure was built in the shadow of a small mountain range that bisected the large island he had brought them to the night after they all agreed that discretion meant a careful retreat for them at the moment.

He had already been busy before their arrival, they found, too. Two separate caves on opposite sides of the island were filled with any provisions they might need in the near future. Including medical supplies, and even fuel for the generators he had thought to bring along. She wasn't too surprised he was so thorough. He had been raised on a farm, after all, and had a good idea what they might need.

"I think you might have been right," Diana told him as Clark dropped out of the sky to rejoin them.

"Oh?" "Not just about leaving the press to fight our opening battle," she grinned as she stepped outside. "I've noticed I am feeling much stronger today than I have in months. In time, I might just regain some of my former power after all," she told him.

"I did wonder," he told her. "And I'm glad, Diana. Not that it matters. I would still be glad to have you at my side."

"I'm glad to be here, Clark," she told him.

"I'm glad you are here. Not that I would have wished this on you, or anyone else. It's just nice to have someone I know, and can trust with me.

"How are the others?" "Concerned, but now that you're here, they will be fine."

"There was never any concern. Still, I am glad you weren't there. They did prove to be trigger-happy."

"We heard. The radio picked up the signal quite clearly. The broadcaster was quite horrified that the National Guard opened fire on an unarmed man without any apparent provocation.

"Some reporters were already even calling for the impeachment of the current President."

"Considering the state of affairs of late, new leadership might not be a bad idea," Clark told her. "I just wish the man would have listened to me."

"Not used to being ignored, are you," Diana chuckled.

"He seemed to think I was a stage magician, or something. It was as if he refused to believe anything even if it was right in front of him."

"I've heard that assessment from the newscasters since our arrival," Diana admitted. "A personable man, but too ready to believe his appointed advisors over any facts he has already dismissed for whatever his reasons."

"Well, they have made the first move," he said. "Now we shall see how far they take it, and what the country, and world will make of all this."

"You intend to keep up your…..patrols?

"Laura told me you've been going out since your arrival," she added needlessly. The reports of miraculous sightings were growing of late, especially since the rumors of a real cape were involved in the past few days.

"As I told her. I can't change who, or what I am," he nodded. "Besides the obvious fact, it will help people more readily accept that I am not here to subvert their government, or cost them their lives in any manner of speaking."

Diana sighed. "I wish I could join you. I feel stronger this morning, but I still can't take to the air, and I'm not altogether sure of my strength. Feeling it is one thing. After my….capture….."

"You've lost some of your confidence. That's all. Maybe you should take a page from Bruce's manual, and test yourself. Manage some kind of workout?" "All right. That sounds like a good idea," she told him as he heard someone in the house moving toward the door.

"Clark," Laura smiled at him. "I thought I heard your voice. Why didn't you come inside? We've been waiting to hear from you."

"That my fault, Laura," Diana turned to face her. "I had some….private concerns to speak with him about when he returned."

"Of course," the older woman nodded, and turned to lead them inside.

Laura didn't have to join them. She just felt she should come along to help, and didn't mind the adventure, as she put it, for once in her life. She had called her children earlier, telling them not to worry, and then helped gather the things they might need to move to their island sanctuary.

_**S**_

The man who led the country swung around in his chair to face the men and women in finely tailored suits, or military uniforms who now filled his office. "Who talked," was all he asked. "Because he had to know we were coming. It's the only explanation.

"So, who blabbed?" "Excuse me, sir," a brunette next to a silent James Cater spoke up. "But it seems to me this….visitor is pretty smart on his own. He likely managed to anticipate our strategy, and devised one of his own to counter us whatever we did.

"After all, everyone knows how effective a weapon the media can be if you manipulate them properly."

"That's fine, honey," came the condescending response from the silver-haired man. "But he's supposedly a foreigner. How would he know….?" "Sir," James spoke up now after glancing at Anna who visibly chafed at the rebuke. "I did brief you that he came from a world very much like our own, _and_ that he was also a journalist on that world. He would know just how to use the media as a result, I suspect."

"An assessment I could have used earlier," a powerfully built black general growled as he stood tapping his right foot impatiently.

"I belief I made a full assessment of the man's abilities and background, general. For some reason, most of it was ignored to push forward an immediate confrontation with these two who were not confirmed antagonists to our regime."

"Regime," the man behind the desk scowled. "James, that sounds more like a word you would use to describe the evil empire's leaders than the duly elected head of the free world. Just whose side are you on there, son?" "America's," James said without hesitation.

"Good. Good," the man nodded. "Just watch those buzzwords. Makes me wonder, you have to see."

James wisely said nothing.

"So, what do we do now," the President turned to his advisors. "We lost these aliens, and those Chinese scientists."

"He's obviously hid them someplace," one of the Pentagon officials in an Air Force uniform said grimly. "We could use satellite reconnaissance to ferret them out, and then….."

"We may have to use a nuclear option," a navy admiral cut in.

"Now, hold on," the vice president surged to his feet from a chair he occupied as he listened to the murmurs of agreement.

All eyes went to the hawk-nosed man with a thick shock of snow-white hair, and piercing green eyes.

"You're talking about deploying nuclear weapons on our own homes here. This alien could be anywhere, and I cannot see dropping bombs on our own territory. Not to mention, they could be right here in the capitol.

"You really want us to nuke ourselves?" "Didn't this guy live in the north pole," another man asked.

"No, that's Santa Claus," someone cut in amid snickers. "He lives at the south pole."

"No, no, he had a giant space station. I saw it on my kid's cartoons a while back."

James wanted to groan at the absurdity of the conversations going on around him.

"Now hold on one dang minute," the president shouted. "Am I the big man in charge here, or what? I make the decisions, and by golly, that's what I'm going to do.

"So, Mr. Carter," he turned to James. "Where _does_ this guy live?" James sighed. "He lived in Metropolis on his world. But he was staying in the Midwest, with a Mrs. Hastings until we apparently managed to run him off."

"Watch that tone, son."

"Mr. President, my point is, this man was ready to be a friend, and an ally to our world, to our country…. when ill advice cost us his trust, and his aid."

"He is associating with known Chinese Communists," a wiry, graying man in a rumpled suit protested.

"He brought Chinese scientists out of that country seeking a new home, and helping them defect when they wanted to escape their country's plans for their work," James hissed, trying hard not to shout at the man who was the current secretary of defense.

"He also broke a known saboteur out of a classified prison during her lawful interrogation," a man in army uniform added.

"I saw that file, general," he addressed the gaunt, blonde man, "But her identity was held as suspect, and nothing was proven at the time, I believe.

"As to her interrogation, that was apparently finished, since you had just ordered her execution by firing squad. An order you rushed to carry out when….._he_ intervened."

The general flushed with barely contained fury, and demanded, "And I suppose you were the one that told him? How else could he know we had his alleged friend….?"

"Are you suggesting you knew the woman's identity all along, and still wanted to execute her," James asked, ignoring the question thrown at him.

"Mr. Carter," the President asked quietly. "I'd like to hear the answer to that one myself."

"And I'll tell you, sir. Just as soon as General Billings answers mine."

"Well, I'll damn well not cow to some spook's….."

"I'm not CIA any longer, general," James drawled quietly. "I'm homeland security director now…."

"For the moment," the secretary of defense put in blandly.

Anna suddenly stepped forward, looking the president in the face, and stated, "Sir, _I_ told the alien about the woman."

"Anna," James stepped forward, his tone a warning.

"Now, hold on, son. Let the lady finish her little confession."

Anna glanced back at him, then looked at Billings before she took another step forward. "Sir, I ran across the files on the apparent extra-dimensional visitor….the female one, and realized General Billings was moving with unnatural, and unnecessary haste to silence her.

"It occurred to me that if she were slain, we might lose any hold on the male we might have hoped to possess if they were connected. Which we now know is fact. Not to mention, it might have set him off.

"After all, if he can tear our jets apart, and fly in and out of China without breaking a sweat, what would he have done to someone who had hurt one of his apparent friends?" "That's interesting thinking, young lady," the President drawled thoughtfully as he scratched his head, and glanced toward his vice president.

"Yes," that white-haired man nodded. "And it might just have given us time to do more than face an untenable situation.

"Still, we could have used more Intel on this pair's abilities and background before we went stumbling into this morass like rank amateurs."

James grit his teeth. It was obviously time for scapegoats to be chosen.

"Mr. Carter did his best to advise us, I believe," the hawk-nosed man went on with glittering eyes. "But, unfortunately, certain…..impulsive acts on the part of some of our commanders have led us to an indefensible posture before the nation.

"There are already polls showing an unprecedented level of support for these….immigrants," he stated, choosing his descriptive term carefully. "There is also a groundswell of belief that they are the real deal. That is, genuine heroes from another world.

"I think it best just now if we….try to quench the seeming hostilities between us, and bring these people back into our good graces.

"For the good of the nation, of course, as well as the sake of our agenda of uniting the world under free democracies."

James said nothing, though he was obviously clenching his jaw over that bit of nonsensical fluff.

"So," the President nodded. "We're agreed.

"Sorry, General Billings, but you'll have to resign, publicly, I think, and then we'll give a public apology on behalf of the nation to our new, ah, refugees."

"And the Chinese," James asked.

"We'll deal with the Chinese in due time," the president smiled. "I'm sure we can make their ambassadors see reason, and get everyone calmed down again. For now…." "I meant the defectors, sir. They are obviously being sheltered by the….refugees as well."

"Right. Right. Well, they are still illegal immigrants," the President remarked after a long thoughtful expression that stayed focused on the vice president longer than anyone else. "So whatever else we do, they have to be taken into custody.

"Right. Custody. Then they need to be properly…..debriefed…..before we can decide what is the best course of action."

"I doubt our refugees would allow that," James told him quietly.

"I don't think it would be in their best interests to be seen as interfering in our political processes. Now, do you," the President asked with a smile. "Explain that to them when you get in touch with them."

"And….how am I supposed to do that," he asked with a scowl.

"I'm sure you'll think of something, James," the leader of the nation smiled at him. "You are pretty resourceful."

James swallowed his own bitter retort as the President continued blithely mapping out just how he felt the situation should go once General Billings made his public apology, and resigned. He stood by Anna, both of them silent, though sharing telling expressions, and just before the meeting ended, the President glanced over at James, and added, "Oh, and while she's apparently quite qualified, son. I'm afraid your aide has to go.

"Loose lips, and all that stuff, y'know," he winked as Anna clenched her fists, and said nothing.

"Sir…."

"It's all right," Anna told him quietly. "I was getting tired of this administration anyway," she said curtly, turning her back on the smiling President, and walking out without looking back.

"Next time get a man for the job, son," the president told him. "Women are nice, but too emotional. I mean, just look at how the Supreme Court got all screwed up after that woman was appointed.

"Just can't trust a woman to be reasonable," he sighed as James left the oval office in disgust.

_**S**_

"Ohmigod, you're real," the woman gasped as she clung to the side of her car as Clark caught it just before it would have tumbled off the bridge that had been damaged by the flood debris hammering its underpinning.

"Just hold on, ma'am," he instructed her as he lifted the car with ease, smiling as the three children shouting from the back seat as he flew it back to the far side of the bridge where rescue workers had been watching helplessly as she and her children in the back had been in danger of being swept away from the damaged bridge by the floodwaters now swamping the bridge on both sides of the center span where she had been trapped.

"Thank you," she shouted as the paramedics pulled her out of the car as he flew away. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she chanted as she ignored the paramedic's attempts to put a blanket around her sodden body as she went to her three children as she kept staring up after him.

Clark allowed a faint smile even as he found himself wishing people just had a little more common sense when it came to trying such dangerous crossings in the wake of obvious storms. Several of his latest rescues had involved extreme sports junkies who had gotten in over their heads. It seemed some young men had far more enthusiasm than sense or training when it came to some of those stunts they thought to emulate.

In the two weeks since leaving Laura's house, he had watched the world, and done his best to help those that were in genuine, immediate peril beyond the scope of the usual authorities. He had stopped several natural disasters, rescued people in mortal danger, and even assisted the law in stopping several potential disasters at besieged schools.

Through it all, the government remained silent and neutral past the obvious stopgap measure of sacrificing one of their generals to the media for public crucifixion. It did not keep the government officials from discretely asking through unofficial channels why the apparent hero was hiding two Chinese dissidents who were supposedly involved in the development of doomsday weapons. Their claim, not the media's. Nor did it silence the Chinese, who continued to demand their 'abducted' citizens be returned.

In the meantime, Clark's only reply were his actions, in which he covered the globe, favoring no one nation, or people, helping all those he could. It left the American government little room to deny that there was a genuine superhero flying around the world, and that for some as yet unnamed reason, America had tried to declare war on him.

Halfway around the globe on his nightly patrol, he smiled as he caught sight of the spy plane trying to pace him from higher up in the stratosphere, and let them pace him for most of the way across the continent. When he reached the Atlantic Coastline, he flew up, paced them for a few miles, and then arched up out of the atmosphere, and came down over the Alps where he slowed down, indulging in some personal memories of his honeymoon with his wife spent in the high mountains where no one had been able to find them for three wonderful days before duty called for both of them once again.

He turned south, covering the African continent for which he had yet to decide how to best proceed in regard to the utter chaos that seemed to reign there, and finding nothing of which he could handle at the moment, he continued out into the Pacific beyond Madagascar as he arched northward toward India.

By then, the spy plane was lost far behind him, and likely still trying to triangulate his purposely random patrol patterns he had set up over the past weeks, and wondering just where he was going to light next. Next proved a stop in South Korea, where even as her mother watched, a toddler veered dangerously close to an open mine field recently expanded, but not yet fenced off as the governments grew anxious over one another's conflicting policies.

He flew down, grabbing the child even as the mine exploded, and had to shield the girl with his body, which cost him a quarter of his cape, not that it mattered to him. The mother simply stood gaping as he rose up out of the mine field, and flew slowly over to her, handing her the stunned child too frightened to even cry as yet.

"Try not to let her stray too far next time," he told her with a smile as he handed the mother her child, using her own language to ensure she understood. "I might not be around next time," he cautioned her.

He smiled at the little girl who was staring owlishly up at him from the safety of her mother's arms even as soldiers came running to investigate the explosion. "No harm done," he called out to them, and rose into the sky just starting to darken as night came to this side of the planet.

The soldiers, three Koreans, and four Americans, stopped to gape at him as he rose into the air, unscathed by the explosion, and vanished in a characteristic blur of speed even as they watched. Feeling he had done enough, he turned South, intending to ensure no satellite could track him as he rose high into the atmosphere, going hypersonic as he crossed the polar icecap, and veered north toward that part of the Atlantic where he currently called home.

_**S**_

"Zip. Nothing. Nada.

"That's what's we have managed to get after more than _three _weeks of intense scrutiny with the best reconnaissance this nation can summon. Satellite tracking can't keep pace with him, and the best spy planes, triangulation methods, or plain radar can't begin to keep a bead on him when he gets moving," Agent Simon Douglas, the man first assigned the 'Superman' case complained as he reported to James.

James secretly didn't mind one bit.

Having yet to replace Anna Graves, he knew Douglas was running his ass off trying to kiss up for a chance to take that job. Simon Douglas, James knew, was a butt-kissing yes-man who would do anything in his own quest for advancement. And the man had ambitions.

Meanwhile, Anna had made a name for herself as the voice for the hitherto silent heroes who had only made one real statement to date. That one being the offer to let the media see just what their own government was up to while supposedly keeping them safe which featured the widow's house being shot up by overeager weekend warriors. That footage was still making rounds on the internet, and being dredged up by certain cable news shows as they kept the story alive. After all, it was also the only footage where they actually captured the costumed hero in front of a camera.

How Clark had talked them into the open camera left behind at Laura Hastings' house was still a mystery. He did know that the world had been buzzing about heroes since, and there had been no less than two dozen cases of wannabes caught playing vigilante since then.

Ironically, Clark never interfered with the police to date. He appeared on rare situations, asking if they wished his aid, and then left. So far, his primary efforts had been at stemming natural disasters, or saving people from themselves.

There had, however, not been a sign of Diana, or the Li's.

Laura had reappeared briefly at one of her children's houses in Florida. She gave a short interview, telling the press how disappointed she was in the authorities, and that she certainly expected them to have her house repaired by the time she returned home. As far as any questions regarding the alleged heroes, she said only they were very nice people, and the world should be ashamed for how they were being treated by some folk.

James knew the woman's house had already been repaired by now. The governor of her state had personally overseen the job. Of course, there were rumors he only did so because of an upcoming presidential bid. In the meantime, she didn't drop so much as one stray word that might help them find Clark, or Diana.

And then there were dozens of angry feminist groups that really wanted to talk to her after the details of her stay at Guantanamo somehow leaked out. Especially since Diana's trials with the Navy came along with them, making Uncle Sam take a very black eye in regard to women's rights in general.

He cleared his throat as Simon stopped ranting, and eyed the stereotypical crew-cut agent in the dark suit. Guy had obviously watched one too many movies. "All we can do is wait, Simon. I told you that before now.

"We aren't going to find these people with the methods you've described. If you think about it, they've managed to elude their own more powerful enemies for decades on their own world if our stories are any judge."

"Stories," Simon murmured. "Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Maybe we just need to figure how they did this disappearing act on their world, and then find them that way," he said thoughtfully.

"That's a good idea," he said, rolling his eyes at the time.

It was a statement that would come back to haunt him sooner than he realized.

_**S**_

"They're up to something," Diana told Clark as they watched from the cave as a spy plane flew by the island for the fourth time that week.

"They're probably trying to grid map the area where Paradise Island is noted to be in the stories about you," he told her. "It's what I'd do," he shrugged when she looked at him.

"That's not very comforting," she told him. Even after another month on this world, while she was slowly regaining some strength, it still did not come anywhere near what her former gods-given might had been. Which had given her the thought that was the problem.

This world had no gods. Sleeping, or otherwise, it seemed. It left her without a wellspring from which to draw on in times of need.

"Don't worry. The house is well hidden, and we've left no trace of any occupation on the rest of the island."

"Clark, Diana," Alicia shouted as she ran into the cave, panting from her frantic jog as she spotted them. "There is….trouble. On the radio……We heard……"

"Catch your breath," Diana instructed her. "Just slow down, and….."

"Nuclear….missile," she rasped. "Israel."

Clark was gone, his slacks and shirt still drifting to the ground even as they looked back from almost being blown over by the wake of his departure.

Five miles out at sea, even as he turned toward the trouble, a pilot caught a peculiar signal, and radioed to his commander, "Target acquired. Repeat, target acquired. It definitely originated from this vicinity, headed southeast at…..Mach 3, and still accelerating. It has to be our boy."

"Roger, Hound dog-7," came the reply. "Continue monitoring the area, and await further orders."

_**S**_

Clark had seen the plane, and calculated the odds at it having spotted his takeoff even as he headed toward the telltale plume of a missile his powerful eyes had already spotted at the arch of its flight. It was turning down, and while he had no idea how powerful it might be, it was obvious that it was aimed right at the heart of that most controversial city in the world.

Millions would die, and the resulting fallout, both radioactive, and political would continue to poison the region for decades if he didn't move faster.

Even as sporadic attempts to intercept the missile failed, he reached the projectile now only a handful of miles from its intended target, and his hearing could hear the screams and prayers of an entire city. He matched speed with the deadly weapon, not wanting to shear off something that might cause an early detonation, and came up under the center of the deadly missile.

He ignored the high-powered rounds bouncing off his body as jets tried to intercept the missile, or perhaps even stop him. He didn't know, and didn't care. He carefully cradled the long projectile in powerful hands that closed slowly, but firmly, and began to nudge its flight path upward gradually enough to keep from jarring any instruments within the payload.

Then he was out-muscling the thrust of the rockets for a moment as the gyros tried to restabilize its programmed flight, and forced it higher. Using that thrust as he increased his speed, he headed directly for space as the jets fell back, and sound faded from his ears as he left the atmosphere, and flung the missile directly toward the sun where it would do little harm.

Even as he turned, the payload exploded, the shock wave catching by off guard, and hammering him back into the atmosphere. Falling for a moment in a careless sprawl, the heat of reentry warming his invulnerable skin, he heard a shrill frequency cut across his hearing like a knife. It was a frequency he knew well enough by now, and he looked more than anxious as he stopped his headlong fall even as part of the sky before him actually began to shimmer, and seemingly rip open.

A moment later, it looked not unlike the sky was…..bleeding.

Worse, the rift, as it had named by its creator, was increasing. Being forced open by something on the other side. Something with massive, grayish tentacles. He hovered in the sky, gaping at the hole in the sky, and the utterly alien limbs that writhed like a hundred octopi jammed into a small space. Only that space was still ripping open, and the sounds that were coming from the rift were far worse than the frequencies that had assaulted him earlier.

"When it rains," he muttered darkly as he stared at the bizarre scene before him as every one of Dr. Li's warnings filled his mind.

He stared at the nearest of the sickly gray limbs, and started to approach it only to feel an unnatural sapping of his strength that even Kryptonite couldn't manage. He faltered, falling several thousand feet before distance allowed him to regroup, and turned to stare up at the things in the sky that were continuing to pull the sky open, causing more of that eerie bleeding phenomenon, and allowing even more of the straining tentacles to escape to aid the others in damaging more of the obviously fragile sky's fabric.

He did the only thing he could do. He turned and flew directly toward the island, and hopefully the answers he needed.

_**S**_

"You did what," James spat.

"We spotted a possible base of operations in the Atlantic, so I authorized the Navy to send in a fully equipped assault force to take them into custody," Simon smiled smugly, adding, "You weren't around, so I felt it only proper to act before they were warned again by sympathizers."

"I don't suppose you noticed the Chinese had access to the same Intell?" "I doubt they could do anything….."

"They already did, you idiot," James spat at the man who had just returned from the Pentagon, crowing at his own ingenuity in locating the heroes, claiming James' own idea of using their fictional backgrounds to try finding them as his own. "They just fired that damned sonic weapon Clark told us about, and it's torn a hole in the skies over the Mid Atlantic, as well as setting off mild to severe quakes from Hong Kong to Africa. Didn't you see the news brief just now?"

"I was….just finishing radioing the orders to Admiral Zayer's assault team he's sending onto the island," he murmured a little defensively.

"Look, Douglas," James said, dragging him to where several other agents were watching the report of the bloody gash across the sky spreading from over the Atlantic with macabre tentacles protruding from the unnatural rent in the atmosphere. "_That_ is what I am talking about."

"My…..God," Simon blanched as he stared at the sky. "But….that couldn't have been from the Chinese weapon. The ambassador assured me….."

James jerked his gaze from the disturbing images from an obviously brave reporter trying to keep filming live from the scene to the pale features of his lead field agent. "Assured you of what," he spat, taking a step toward him as Simon backed away only to be pinned against the wall.

"What did you do, Douglas," he demanded, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him bodily against the wall.

"I….I leaked our findings on those so-called heroes to the ambassador. We were talking about a compromise. A way to calm down the furor, and restore relations between our nations. He assured me he only wished to be certain the Li's were all right."

"The Chinese don't want to compromise. They want the Li's dead, you imbecile," James swore as he slammed him against the wall again. "Don't you pay attention to the daily briefs. And you as much as gave them their address, didn't you?

"That's why the weapon was fired over the Atlantic at such high strength.

"Damn you…..Why? Why would you give the Chinese such critical information?" "I thought…..I was sure we'd get the lot of them off the island before they could do anything. We'd be the ones that got the credit, and we could forget that black eye we took over the bad press from the start…."

James swore, shoving him back again, and letting him go. "You jackass. You just gave the Chinese a target. They must have fired that damn sonic weapon full strength to do this kind of damage. And there is no way of telling what those….thing are, or what they're going to do.

"If we survive this, you can forget playing hero ever again. You'll be lucky if you get to sweep the floors in this building," he spat.

"Turner," he snapped at one of the men alternating between the television images, and the confrontation between two of his own colleagues. "Get in touch with whoever you have to, and stop the assault on the island where Clark is holed up with his friends.

"Zayer is just enough of an ass that he won't care if the world is falling apart around him so long as he can do his bit to look good for the history books."

"Do you think…..this hero can handle that kind of thing," George Turner asked him earnestly as he glanced again at the television where a full flight of jets from a carrier in the vicinity were simply knocked out of the sky the moment they got near one of the tentacles.

"That depends on how much he's distracted by that assault team trying to grab his friends," he spat as he headed for his own office.

"God help us all," he heard one of his people murmur as he passed another television set that people were gathered around.

"Amen," James thought, and hoped that Clark really was up to playing hero after all.

_**S**_

"I think it's your sonic weapon," Clark told Chang as they stared up at the sky where the sickly gray appendages flailed at the very fabric of the sky.

"I believe you are right, Clark," the man told him as he eyed the obviously alien phenomenon taking place overhead.

"I can't get near enough to do anything," the frustrated hero told him. "Whatever is up there, it saps my energy the moment I get close."

"Which would imply a negative field band that must counter whatever forces fuel your…..solar cells," Chang told him. "I am at a loss, my friend. I truly do not know what to do."

"Could we fire the sonic device again, and somehow close the rift in that manner," he asked as Diana came running up from the beach with Laura just then. Both of the women looked more than grim, and the men turned to face them as Clark gave a wane smile to Diana.

"No," Dr. Li told him as they acknowledged the women. "I fear it would only make it worse."

"I guess you saw that out there."

"I saw more than that," she told him. "A battleship is moving closer to the island, and it looks like they're about to launch a full scale attack on the island."

Clark closed his eyes, and shook his head. "I hoped it wouldn't come to this."

"I doubt the military is our gravest concern. If those….creatures are so massive they fill the sky, what will they do to our world if they emerge fully in this plane."

"I can tell you that," Diana told them grimly.

"Diana," Clark frowned. "You know about those things?"

"Yes. Remember, I am a child of the gods. And they remind me of stories mother used to tell me. Of the time before the gods, before Zeus drove the Titans from our world, and sealed them in a fathomless abyss.

"I think those are the Titans, Clark. And if they're freed on this planet, then every living creature in the cosmos, not just on Earth, is doomed.

"All life, everywhere, will be obliterated."

"Dear God," a panting Laura exclaimed. "Can't you do something," she asked, turning instinctively to Clark.

Clark, in turn, glanced from Diana to Chang.

"If you tried the sonic emitter again, it would only exacerbate our dilemma if my earlier theories are still sound here.

"This," he gestured to the bleeding wound overhead still spreading across the sky, "Is what I was warning you of all along.

"Apparently, my counterparts in the military did not listen as closely as you."

"Diana, is there anything we can do," he asked.

"Zeus drove them back with his lightning bolts. A great storm washed them into the abyss, and he hammered them with his lightning bolts as he sealed the abyss. Or so the stories mother told me went.

"I have no reason to doubt them," she stated firmly.

"Lightning." He looked up, and considered his job. "I may have a means of handling them, then. But first, we're going to have to ensure the Chinese doesn't try firing that device again.

"Where do I find it, Chang," he asked him determinedly.

The man turned back toward the door without hesitation and ran inside to find an atlas he quickly turned to the maps of China he brought to Clark. "Here. Just a few miles southwest of Beijing, near Nanjing. There's a warehouse that sets on the river outside the city that is a cover for the research complex where they built, and test the sonic emitter I initially designed to test my theories.

"They're firing it through the earth's crust at their targets, so it will be on the ground floor of the complex, pointing downward. The outer chamber houses the computer systems, and aiming systems. The emitter itself will be inside an insulated chamber surrounded by the other systems.

"It will be well guarded," he added needlessly.

"That won't matter," he said grimly as he turned to Diana. "Where is Alicia," he asked her.

"Staying under cover near the second cave where she can watch the beach without being seen."

"Smart.

"Diana, I'm going to have to leave them to you. I have to…."

"Go," she told him with a firm nod. "We'll be fine."

He spared a moment to study her, and nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Diana smiled as she reached out and pulled him close for a brief kiss. "Just don't be too late," she told him, and let him go.

He was airborne in the same instant, the sonic boom following his departure audible even over the maddening screeches now beginning to emanate from the sky as the rift grew not only vertically, but widened.

_**S**_

The Chinese never knew what had happened until was over.

They had secured the location of their traitor, and to ensure their military secrets remained secrets, they decided to use the now active sonic emitter to test just how deadly it might actually be at full strength. Only the operator chosen to run the machine did not know its systems as well as Dr. Li. He overshot the terminal mark for the target, tearing a hole in the atmosphere itself according to the news now being intercepted from the western media.

Worse, the island targeted for destruction had not even been affected despite the numerous residual quakes that shook almost a full quarter of the globe along the path of the sound wave unleashed at nearly full strength to ensure its efficacy this time.

Even as they prepared for a second firing, certain it would destroy the island if only properly targeted this time, what was first taken for a massive quake shook the building, and the immediate vicinity around the secure complex housing the emitter. Even as they raced for cover, and tried in vain to escape the rain of debris as the complex literally came apart, the dull whine of the generators suddenly stopped cold, and the thunder of destruction filled the air around them as the entire complex began to self destruct around them for no apparent reason.

The emitter itself fragmented as the quake seemed to reach its apex with a massive explosion that devastated the evacuated control center, and what remained of the device rained down the bore shaft drilled to allow the emitter's tip to be better aimed into the bowels of the earth at whatever target they wanted to pinpoint. By the time the quake faded, and they could safely return to the ruined complex, there was very little left of the sonic emitter itself, save a collapsed warehouse that sagged in on itself as smoke and dust billowed out of the shattered roof.

_**S**_

Diana gathered her three companions, and had them hide deeper inside the cave, hoping they would escape detection long enough to evade capture, or even death, since she had no idea what the men in those landing crafts intended upon their arrival.

The sky overhead was almost completely covered in an eerie crimson stain now, and yet still the soldiers came on, threatening her sanctuary as Hercules once threatened her mother countless years ago on another world that now seemed so far away.

She thought of Antiope, her aunt, who had also been a great warrior, and the lost Amazons that waged a futile war under Myrine to hold their own place in Man's World as the day of the gods seemed even then fated to fade from the face of the world.

They were warriors all. Strong, determined, and no better than she, and yet they faced their fates without hesitation. She walked out toward the beach, thinking of how easily she might have managed this confrontation at any other time, or place, but refused to think of any other outcome but victory.

She had to have faith.

In Clark.

In the gods, that while silent, still had to be somewhere watching. She simply knew that as surely as she knew anything at all in this mad world.

Most of all, she had to have faith in herself.

She almost laughed as she looked down at herself, clad in a white blouse with the sleeves rolled up, and tan slacks, she looked far less a warrior, or heroine just then, unless you considered her gleaming bracelets, and the steely determination that gleamed in her eyes as she awaited the first landing craft not twenty yards away now.

She refused to cower. She was, after all, a child of the gods. If the rumors were true, the blood of Ares himself flowed in her veins.

She was Diana. Princess, and warrior.

She would not run.

"Whatever comes," she murmured in silent prayer to her gods, "Let me face it as a warrior.

"As an Amazon."

Then the first landing craft hit the beach, and armed men started to spill out.

Just as the almost melodious screeching overhead turned into a deafening cacophony.

_**S**_

Clark flew as fast as he ever had before as he plowed fists first into the weapon, simply shattering whatever lay before him as he dove down into the very bowels of the warehouse, using his heat vision to finish whatever his fists left untouched. By the time he had turned to fly back up out of the collapsing structure the guards and technicians wisely evacuated in timely fashion the moment he starting smashing through the roof, the weapon was forever silenced, and all its critical components little more than useless slag, or debris.

He flew straight up, little more than a barely visible streak of color against the sky as he reached a zenith high over the curved horizon of the globe below, and paused only a few seconds to soak in the enervating rays of the bright star that his new world orbited. Then he was arching down again, angling his descent to bring him down right below the alien wound in the ethereal plane of this dimension's world.

He felt the faint tugging at his energy reserves even as he opened his eyes wide in a manner he rarely employed, and unleashed the pure, ocular energies the press had long ago dubbed heat vision. He heard as much as saw the strange tentacles writhe and recoil, even as several actually withdrew away from the heart of his searing force he unleashed on them, and the bleeding fissure that threatened to literally unzip the very sky around him.

The power was leached from him by both the alien presence above, and the sheer effort of burning away the sickly-gray limbs that now thrashed in mad pain, and evident distaste for his heat vision as he felt himself just then beginning to lag.

He could almost feel the vibrations pulsing through the air itself as the wriggling appendages hammered at it as if trying to stretch past his punishing heat vision to reach him. Still, he did not let up. Could not let up.

If Diana's gods had succeeded in driving these fantastic creatures away, he could do no less, though he was no god. For if he failed, this world, and all around him would die. Considering the impact of such a threat, he was not so sure the worlds in other dimensions would be any safer if he failed here today.

He refused to consider that possibility. He had faced death many times before now. He had even died, and faced the grim prospect of an afterlife beyond anything he had ever known, or expected. But he would not yield even if he faced it yet again. He was a hero. This was what he did.

He focused his by now throbbing eyes all the sharper, and unleashed even more blazing energy as his heat field spread slightly, and the thrashing coils that still remained now began to purposely jerk back up through the fracture in the world's atmosphere. Every ounce of energy he could summon and more poured out through his eyes, and then there was a dulled shock wave as the edges of the bloody wound collapsed together with an unnatural sound beyond description once the last tentacle withdrew up into its own dimension.

The shock wave was more than enough to drive his almost completely spent form back, and hurl him toward the ocean below. He was too weak to fight it, but he smiled grimly as he saw the crimson fracture sealing even as he fell. He had won. Once more, he had defied the odds, and beaten back death itself.

_**S**_

Diana dodged bullets even as she deflected others, these men obviously here to kill from the way they immediately opened fire on her. Her best strategy, she soon found, was to charge them, for it kept them from shooting at her for fear of hitting their own comrades. It also kept the three tanks that had just landed silenced, as well as the mortars some of the men had tried to use against her.

She was in danger of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers several times, but she still managed to hold them off with just her strength as some of them instinctively held back for whatever reason, and she was able to exploit those moments to charge the hesitant soldiers. Her apparent success in tactics was shown by the nearly forty-odd men laying wounded or unconscious behind her, for she was not pulling her punches just then, seeking only to defend herself, and her companions.

She found it odd a number of the men were reluctant to physically attack her when they had little problem trying to shoot her. She was almost overwhelmed again when one of the officers led his entire platoon to surround her, trying to weight her down with sheer numbers.

She might have floundered then, but the sky overhead suddenly exploded with a blinding, red light, and they all froze as they looked up even as the things emerging from the other world began to truly scream. She wanted to cry out herself, in joy, when she realized that while she couldn't see him, Clark must have returned. For the things were reacting for the first time since she had seen them emerge from that bloody gash in the world's reality, and like Zeus, he must be driving them from their world.

Then the moment passed, and they became aware of one another yet again as a familiar voice shouted fresh orders, and men actually began shooting through their own ranks to try to hit her again. She barely deflected one barrage, but managed to do so, though quite a few soldiers went down from both friendly fire, and ricochets.

Another officer stopped the mad firestorm, and the admiral she had first met on that battleship shouted irrationally at the other as the men once more pressed forward, still determined to take her captive. She didn't consider her strength was not yet back to her usual levels. She did not think of fatigue, or even capture. For her, this was a battle for life. For her, death was the only surrender.

They would not chain her again.

She would not allow it.

She just managed to pull her punch before almost putting a hole in one scrawny soldier's gut when she felt a surge of adrenalin, and knew her power had just doubled. She didn't falter as she pondered that development. She just accepted, as a warrior did any good, or ill visitation of fate, and waded back into the battle.

"Enough," the admiral she remembered from that first ship suddenly shouted. "You hear me, bitch," he shouted again at her, pointing to her right. "Stop right now, or those three die."

She turned, one fist still cocked, and turned to see the Li's, and a disheveled Laura Hastings, bound and captive in the hands of a group of men in black uniforms.

She had been outflanked. While she had fought, they had used the diversion of the battle to creep past her, and find her friends.

"I knew you were a coward," she spat at the officer even as the sky suddenly brightened, and a shock wave all but drove them all to their knees.

Even as she climbed back to her feet, just ahead of most of the men, she was almost bowled over again as something began to shake the very ground beneath her feet. Then the rocky shore splintered near the admiral's feet, and Clark rose out of the ground like an avenging demon.

His cape was little more than a tattered rag, his costume torn and badly scorched in several places. Even his eyes seemed to still be radiating a crimson glow as he hovered just a few feet from the ground he had just smashed up through.

"Who's…..next," he growled in a voice that might even have made Ares quake.

Every man there, the admiral included, dropped their arms, and stepped back as Clark slowly returned to the ground, and turned toward her.

"Are you all right," he asked her.

She smiled, not even aware of how ragged her own torn clothing was as she stood there feeling nothing but the euphoria from her battle. And the joy at seeing him alive, and victorious. "Never better," she smiled.

"Mrs. Hasting," he asked, turning to the woman even as his smoldering eyes finally returned to their usual azure hue. "Are you all right?" "I will be when these _bullies_ turn me loose," she snapped, showing no fear.

The Li's, however, looked more than uncertain as to what they might yet face.

Clark had little patience for negations as he turned to the sputtering admiral standing beside the army officer with him, and simply ordered, "Get off my island.

"Now."

The soldiers released the hostages without waiting for a command, and then quickly helped their companions carry the injured away as they silently obeyed that grim directive without any show of hesitation. Diana stood her ground, though she had the impulse to rush to him, and embrace the day's victor. She was used to that impulse, and had experience in quelling it. Otherwise, she might just have given in at that point.

Clark simply stood watching them until the last man was off the beach.

Even then, he remained on the beach, watching.

The navy seemed to get the message. The ships turned, and began to leave the area. The only aircraft left were from public media that had uncannily known just where to show up. Still, they only circled, not getting too close to the island where Clark still stood plainly in sight, and obviously still furious.

She turned to finish freeing the Li's, Laura already having been released by one of the soldiers before they departed. Only then did she go to Clark's side, smiling smugly as she looked up at him. "I have seen you manage great victories before, but this one has to be one for our annals. You truly were just in time."

"Thanks," he smiled ruefully as he glanced down at her, noting the last media aircraft were finally turning away, likely low on fuel by now.

"Clark?"

"Diana, I can't move," he said with a grim chuckle. "I don't think I've been this spent in years," he admitted as he stood there, unmoving, and just watched the sun slowly dropping toward the horizon.

"You…..bluffed," Chang exclaimed from behind him.

"It worked," Diana laughed, sounding more than pleased.

"I'm more than grateful it did," he said as he slowly dropped down to settle on his knees on the beach.

"The emitter?" "Destroyed," he told the scientist. "I doubt they'll be rebuilding it anytime soon now that the Western governments know what to look for, _and_ now that the world understands the dangers of such research."

"I wouldn't count on it," Alicia said quietly.

"We can always hope, dear," Laura told her practically.

"You do know that without the emitter, there is no chance of even trying to find you a way home," Chang finally said as he moved to stand before the spent hero.

"I understand that, Dr. Li," he told him somberly. "I understood that even before I destroyed the machine. Still, we really didn't have much of a choice."

"Feeling any better yet," Diana asked him as she gave him a hand, helping him stand when he started to rise once more.

"I won't be breaking any records for a day or two, but I'll recover," he told her.

"I'll bet you could use a good, hot meal," Laura said abruptly. "It is about time for supper, and I know I'm hungry."

"That sounds like a very good idea, Laura," Diana agreed. "Clark, why don't you go back with them. I'll snoop around a little longer out here, and make sure they aren't going to try coming back anytime soon."

"All right," he agreed. "Call if you need anything," he told her.

She nodded, waving them on as she turned back to the beach, and they turned to the path that led to their hidden sanctuary. She waited until she was certain she was alone herself, and looked up at the pale, pinkish sky that were still healing after the bizarre injury it had suffered, and smiled toward the setting sun.

"Thank you, Hera, for your strength."

A faint, warm breeze blew in from the sea, and she sighed in rare contentment as she stared around the broken terrain now littered with the brass shells, and in some places, blood, from the soldiers' attack. She looked over at the gaping hole in the rocky beach just above the waterline where Clark had emerged, and went over to stand beside it. She looked down, but only saw seawater below. He had obviously come right up out of the ocean.

She looked up at the darkening skies, and smiled as the first stars already began to twinkle far overhead before she turned back to the join the others. "Thank you," she murmured again, acknowledging her debt to the gods, and knowing in some way, they had helped them carry this day. It was a knowledge that had no basis in men's science, but she knew it for the truth all the same. The gods were here, and they remained her allies. She simply knew it to be so.

_**S**_

James stood in front of the President, and only a few senior advisors as he stared back at the unhappy face of his commander-in-chief.

"Just what the devil happened out there, Mr. Carter," he finally demanded.

"In reference to what, sir," James finally sighed. "Frankly, my office took in so many tips from so many witnesses, and media sources, that it sounded like we were on the brink of a genuine apocalypse, to borrow the religious terminology.

"If that….man had not been as good as he was rumored to be, we'd all be sleeping in hell today," he added grimly.

"Just tell me what happened," the President grumbled, eyeing his advisors as he admitted, "Because so far, all I've gotten is a lot of positive spinning pabulum, and even I know what CNN is running as an explanation is not even close to the truth.

"Or am I really expected to believe we were almost swallowed by an alien octopus the size of a planet?"

"Sir, I think the media actually did a fair job of downplaying the truth this time. The fact is, we were on the threshold of complete annihilation. If it weren't for….."

"If you start spouting nonsense like '_he saved the day_,' I'm going to wonder about you, colonel," the secretary of defense said in obvious disdain.

"He did," James told the man, then nodded at the President. "And it might interest you to know, since the final report glossed over that fact, but the woman everyone assumed was an easy target, and the means to broker some control over him, managed to fight off an elite assault team our esteemed secretary ordered in to _kill_ everyone on sight.

"Over half that team is now in Walter Reed. Apparently, our….targets did not suffer a scratch so far as we could tell."

"You what," the President turned to stare at the man he had personally vouched for when he forced his appointment through the usual channels.

"Now, calm down," the stiffly smiling, hawk-faced man told the president who turned a very ruddy shade of crimson. "It's not what it sounds like. I…..I told them to use whatever means were necessary _if_ the targets were recalcitrant," the less than groomed secretary assured the fuming national leader.

"If I might make a suggestion, sir," James cut in. "At this point, we look more like bullies than the poster children for free democracy."

"What's your point, son," the President grumbled as he sank back in his chair, well aware of what the media was saying. He had been up half the night listening to everyone from the Israeli Prime Minister, to the average American citizen singing the praises of the true champions of the world who had stopped a madman's plot to start a nuclear war, and saved the world in general from a truly alien threat.

The only ones not howling for America's figurative head just then, were the Chinese, who were demanding public apologies, and endless remunerations for transgressions against their sovereign shores by an obvious Western power.

Of course, the extremists in the Middle East weren't very happy either. Not that it was a new thing, since they were unhappy about anything and everything that even smacked of progress, liberty, or more modern ideas such as equality.

"Your point," the president echoed when James glanced around, weighed his options, and squared his shoulders, figuratively, and literally.

"Sir, we should appoint a liaison, or ambassador to their island to try to arrange a peace between us."

"Are you out of your mind," the gray-haired secretary spat furiously. "That would be tantamount to declaring…."

"We attacked innocent people on an island outside our waters, without due provocation," James stated baldly. "Isn't that kind of thing we're supposed to be preventing these days," he asked the President.

"And think, sir. If we can still assure them we are genuinely grateful, and looking for their aid, not their ire, think….just think what a man that could do the things he did in the past few days could do for us if he no longer considered us a threat to the world we all know we want to make a better place for everyone in it."

"We cannot afford to….."

"Shut up," the President ordered the wiry secretary curtly.

Drawing a deep breath, he leaned back in his padded, leather chair, and stared at James with sharp eyes in his nondescript features that fooled a great many into thinking him less than aware of the world around him. James was not fooled. Never had been. He just felt the man tended to listen to certain people who didn't have the slightest idea what was going on in the real, and modern world around them in this new century.

Too many cold warriors, lost in the fifties, or even forties, and thinking the world was still black and white when it had actually exploded into a Technicolor morass more than two decades ago. If you weren't aware of that, you couldn't hope to begin to cope with the explosion of amoral, overstressed, tech-junkies who were literally living on the edge of an abyss they couldn't seem to see.

"All right, son. Since this is your idea, I've got the notion you know who might make a good….liaison to these folks.

"Am I right?"

"Yes, sir," he nodded. "I do."

"Well, let's hear it."

James nodded, and outlined his plan to contact the outcast refugees without starting another confrontation that could only end in disaster. The SEAL who had described Clark's arrival after his fall from the sky had been eloquent in his account. Wounded aside, there was more than one man who had needed to change his shorts after that man had exploded out of the ground, eyes smoldering with inner fury, and literal fire, and ordered them off his island.

Even Zayer had not tried to argue at that point.

_**S**_

Clark and Diana stood side-by-side as they watched the presidential helicopter approach the island. They stood on the rocky beach still littered with debris from the battle that week. They had considered cleaning it up, but decided to leave the spent brass, and cartridges to remind anyone trying to take the island what had happened the last time.

Clark stood in an immaculate navy suit, sans tie as he stood watching the new U.S. ambassador approach who had cautiously called for permission to approach before the aircraft had ever even left the aircraft carrier. The new ambassador appointed to contact them had requested the audience with just enough sincere courtesy that she had even impressed the still fuming Amazon.

Diana stood beside him in a long, flowing white gown he had purchased for her from a discreet shop in Paris. It was enough like one of her own gowns she often wore to State events that he felt it more than perfect for the statuesque heroine who had regained much of her confidence since holding off the attacking military long enough for him to return.

The five days that had passed since the chaos that had almost literally drained him of his own energies had been more than enough to see him fully recharged by the bright sunshine that had blessed the island all week. If there were gods hiding somewhere in this dimension, it seemed they had finally smiled on them, for the world had been unusually quiescent this past week, with virtually no need for superhuman intervention in the wake of the near disasters that had almost claimed this globe.

Usually warring factions were even pulling together to help one another recover from the massive quakes that had started just before the sky had torn open.

Clark and Diana now stood watching the two Marines step down from the helicopter first, pulling down the steps to let the ambassador step down even as two media stars followed her. He had been a little surprised to hear it was Anna Graves who had been appointed to contact them, until James had discretely advised him it had been she who had first leaked Diana's presence to him, allowing Clark to save her, literally at the last minute.

That in itself had been enough to sway him to listen.

Diana had agreed, too, but still simmered with a degree of resentment as she watched the young brunette in a dark green dress tailored for formal occasions. Her dark hair was pinned up, carefully styled, and still some of it blew free as the wash from the rotors passed over her as she and the two reporters, one carrying a video camera, approached them with the Marines staying discreetly behind.

"Ms. Graves," Clark smiled as he stepped forward to offer a hand. "I am glad you're here.

"Hopefully we can start moving beyond suspicions, and form a new understanding between us, and this world as a whole."

"That is why I am here, Mr. Kent," she smiled. "And I am glad to see you, uhm….Princess Diana," she addressed her in a half query with an ironic tone in her voice.

"Just Diana will do," the Amazon told her solemnly. "My title belongs to another place, after all."

"All right. So, I understand you are willing to sit down and discuss our….mutual cooperation in this attempt to…."

"One proviso," Diana cut her off. "No video.

"You can record audio, but no film," she told the cameraman. "For the time being, it's best that no one sees just what the state of our defenses are on our island."

"You….are building defenses?" Clark's smile slipped as he nodded. "We seem to need them, don't you agree? Not that Diana, or I are that vulnerable," he added. "Still, there are those who have taken sanctuary with us, and we do not want them harmed if one, or both of us happen to be away at any given time."

"Of course.

"And on behalf of the President, I can assure you that attack was ill-advised, and unwarranted by his office. The man who did order it exceeded his mandate, and will be reprimanded."

"The camera," Diana stated firmly again as the cameraman lowered the camera, though the red light continued blinking. "Leave it here," she stated as Clark gestured toward the path they would take to their current residence. "You wouldn't want to have an accident that damaged it."

The man eyed the curvy blonde with the microphone at that subtle threat, and she nodded even as she dug out a small mini-recorder. He set the camera down, the red light gone, and followed her with an equipment bag, and a back-up recorder.

"How about still images," he asked abruptly, pulling out a digital camera.

"Only of what we permit," Diana told him after a glance at Clark.

"Lead the way," Anna smiled as she joined the pair.

_**S**_

Diana sat on the crest of the small plateau overlooking a third of the island that sprawled out before her. The moon hung low and fat in the night sky as she closed her eyes with a soft breath that hung on the still air like a plaintiff sigh. In her mind, she was once more herself, clad in Amazonian armor. She knelt before a marble altar, a flame consuming the offerings to the gods and goddesses her sisters had revered since before the first Amazon stepped foot on Paradise Island when they turned their back on Man's World so long ago.

She briefly considered the events of that morning. Of Anna Graves' cautious attempt to reconcile her nation with her and Clark's regard. Diana knew she likely owed her life to the woman, but she was cautious by nature. They listened to all she had to say as the young diplomat surveyed the large, marble temple Clark was helping her to construct as the first major building project on New Themyscira, complete with Ionic columns that held up a porch that would host an altar to the gods. Wherever they were on this eerily familiar world.

The reporter had been more than grateful for the full story of how she and Clark had come to this world. The scientists had confirmed that tale, of course, and added their own dire warnings over any attempts to duplicate that experiment, or the research that led to it after what had happened in the skies over the Atlantic just last week.

What truly drew the young woman was the mingling of high-tech melded into the Greek architecture being employed for the great palace. While seldom exercised on their own Earth, Clark had a genuinely impressive intellect, and the entire history and science of a long-dead world at his command. He employed that now as he integrated Kryptonian science adapted to their Terran technology. Robotic drones aided with some of the labor, and tasks after only a few days, the first drones he built having built others. He was now working to build an array that would be able to project a near impenetrable shield around the island using solar energy to power the generators.

Just the brief glimpse of that technology had genuinely impressed the reporters, and the government's liaison sent to sway them where force had not was also more than fascinated by all she saw once they reached the area where the two were building what would have taken men, and the best equipment, years to accomplish.

Now, with Anna Graves' assurances in their ears, and the media's apparent favor aiding public opinion in turning even more to their side, she had but one concern that still nagged her as she watched the shadows claim the island as the sun set to her left.

She faced north, focusing on that legendary direction where the gods had first come down to man so many generations past. She focused on her patron, on Hera, and even Ares, supposedly her grandfather. She didn't know, and didn't care just then. She was stronger, and growing stronger, but she was still far from the plateau she had known as Wonder Woman on her home world. She suspected she would never reach that plateau without aid. Without an appeal to the gods of this world. She wondered if they were the very same, and if her gods had simply abandoned this world that had apparently turned to science, and blind reason to the exclusion of all else.

Was that why no metas existed here? Why no one dared rise above the common morass of the greater society? These people claimed to value independence, yet shunned anyone that did not conform. They celebrated diversity, yet spurned anyone that dared present themselves as other than the greater whole that sought to assimilate those around them.

It was a world of bizarre contradictions.

Shoving all that, and more aside, she focused on her mental altar, and the plane where she often communed with her patrons when she needed guidance.

She sat quietly, kneeling in her mind, and offered herself, and her service to the gods if they would just hear her once more. If they would just answer her.

Hours passed, and even her steely discipline could not dispel the growing chill in the night air as the sun's heat left the air. She refused to yield to despair. She waited. Patience was more than a virtue in appealing to the gods. It was a requirement. Part of a test, to see if the petitioner truly believed, and truly desired an audience.

She would not fail the test.

They had a peace of sorts for the foreseeable future, and she intended to use it to her benefit.

She let the breath in her lungs slow ever more, her heart remaining calm as she both sat and knelt. Both watched, and bowed. Time, after all, was one thing she had in abundance did her immortality follow her to this world.

She was determined not to fail. To never again need fear a man's wrath. To ever again face death without the strength to fight. Not ever again.

_**S**_

"Good morning," Clark smiled as she walked down to join him where he balanced a long, white marble column he had just brought over to the island after digging it out of a quarry far to the east.

"Good morning," she smiled back, still in her white gown, and barefoot from her long hours of mediation in the foothills.

"Did you find any of the answers you sought," he asked.

Still smiling, she reached out and took the new column from him with little effort. Still smiling, she arched her bare feet, and flew up to the palace they were building, and gracefully set it into place, careful to avoid stressing the fifteen foot pillar that would hold the ceiling of the outer porch once it was complete. Flying back to where he stood, grinning ear-to-ear in a manner she remembered with favor, she settled to the ground beside him, her blue eyes dancing with life and vitality.

"You reached your gods," he said needlessly.

"Yes.

"As I pondered the question, it occurred to me that to be true gods, they would have had to be deities that defied such limitations as dimensional walls. Artemis came to me late in the night, and restored my might and power, and gave me a new commission to bring peace, and inspiration to this world, as we sought to do on our own."

"I don't suppose they offered any clues as to how we might return? Or if we could?" "You have met a few of my gods, Clark," she laughed. "They are not known for straight answers at the best of times. All I could learn was….we are here, and here we must continue the mission I was given back on Paradise Island when I was first charged with bringing light to Man's dark world."

"At least they did hear you," he said, though his expression changed just enough for her to know he was disappointed by her reply. "That tells me we aren't completely without hope."

She kept her own smile, but kept Artemis' whole message to herself for the moment.

The goddess told her they had both been sent to this world purposely. She, as the light to an even darker world facing extinction. Clark being sent to serve to aid her, and inspire her to keep the fight she was charged with winning.

She had pointedly asked if they would, or could ever return home.

There had been no actual reply. That was true enough.

Not unless you could decipher the cryptic, "_What must be done, will be done_," she had told her, just before vanishing back into the greater silence just before her mystic belt and bracelets had sent a surge of magical power back into her body, energizing her as they first had the day she won the right to go into Man's World.

She smiled as she turned with Clark toward the nearby ranch house where Laura stepped out to shout for them to come eat. The woman waved to them, and then went back inside, apparently content to stay and help them for now. Just as the Li's seemed content to stay and argue science with Clark while they worked on some computer, or some equation to ascertain the power needs for the island aside from what the shield would require.

"Shall we go," she asked him, still smiling, deciding to surprise him with her restored uniform later. When she had woke from her mediations, she had found herself once more possessed of her own costume. Once more the champion she had been charged with being, but now to an entirely new world.

"We might as well," Clark sighed, though he still couldn't help but show some of his regret at her reply. "You know how she is if she thinks we aren't eating enough."

"Very true," Diana grinned, and impulsively took his arm. "Let's go eat, then.

"Then, we shall begin again.

"And whatever comes, we shall face it together."

He studied her, smiled a little more naturally as he absorbed her optimism, and nodded. "You're right. We've never backed away from a challenge yet. As long as we're alive, there's always hope. Who knows what might still happen before this is over."

She smiled again, feeling almost carefree for a moment as she laughed into the morning sun. For a moment, she felt as if this was the first day of her life, and she had just opened her eyes on the first sunrise, and the future was an ephemeral thing full of promise that stretched out long and wide before her.

She did not doubt she would find out.

"Together," she murmured, and went into the house to eat before their day began anew.

_To be continued……_


	5. Chapter 5

**I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy.**

_**SUPER **_

_**By LJ**_

**Part 5 **

"Diana," Bruce shouted, coming awake even as the noonday sun poured in through the open curtain.

"Another nightmare, Master Bruce," Alfred asked as he turned from opening that particular curtain to let the light and air into the room. "Perhaps you are working too hard again," the older man suggested, his once dark hair white as snow, though his shoulders remained as ramrod straight as they had ever been.

Bruce eyed him blandly, but did not reply as he wiped a hand over his weathered features just beginning to show the first signs of age as he slid down that peak from mature adult into middle age. He did not fear age as such, but he did fear loosing his edge. It was a fear that kept him striving to improve himself, body and mind, for years now.

For the fear was not so much of aging, as it was losing a war he had declared when he was still a child, standing over the bloody corpses of his own parents. It was a war he refused to lose, no matter what it cost him.

"Not so much a nightmare, as a memory," Bruce scowled as he accepted the bitter morning tea he had come to favor. It was also healthier than the black coffee he had once preferred in more youthful days. "I keep reliving that day. Something about it….nags me."

"Ah. You refer to your compatriot's untimely departure from this world," the wise butler, and longtime friend nodded as he refilled Bruce's cup as he sat on the edge of his bed, his naked body betraying the scars of his private war.

"That's just it," Bruce said, looking up at him with a more familiar gaze usually reserved for his alter ego's use. "I'm starting to think that she didn't die. I think…..something else happened to her."

"Begging your pardon, sir," the old man drawled as he turned to serve him the breakfast tray he had prepared just twenty minutes ago. "But you yourself were there when that villain's light-ray vaporized her. Are you sure you're just not in denial?" His tone could not help suggesting the implied, "_Again_."

"No," Bruce replied curtly, ignoring the breakfast tray, and rising from the bed only to drop down to start the first pushups of his morning calisthenics without bothering to dress.

"No," he panted after he reached the one-hundred mark, and kept going. "I have…revisited that moment in my mind dozens….of times, Alfred.

"I have studied the tapes of that mission until they're almost worn out.

"It was something on them that kept bothering me. I think my subconscious figured it out last night."

"Then what do you think happened," Alfred asked, not prepared to doubt his employee and friend's instincts when they had been proven right so many times over the years.

"Accidentally, or not, Diana was….sent somewhere. Or taken. I don't know which.

"I do know…..she isn't dead."

"You are that certain," he asked as Bruce did a fluid somersault, landing easily on his feet to stand before him before reaching for a slice of the plain, wheat toast.

"Completely," he stated before he bit into the toasted bread with a thoughtful look that suggested his mind was already working on something far removed from breakfast, or his usual regimen.

He did not stop, however, until he finished both. He was, if anything, disciplined. Alfred knew that better than anyone in the world. Even his occasional teammates in the Justice League.

"I assume you'll be spending your nights below, then," he asked later as he collected the empty tray, and glanced back at where Bruce dressed quickly, and efficiently in casual attire. "Until you solve this conundrum?"

"Alfred," he said as he pulled on a sport coat that matched his tan slacks. "Almost fourteen years ago, Superman vanished without a trace, and hasn't been seen since.

"Even Lois gave up on his returning by now. She even had _Clark_ declared dead in an arranged accident.

"You've heard all the theories as well as I have. I now believe the disappearances might well be connected."

"Are you suggesting….?" "I don't think Dr. Light killed Diana. I think she was taken by whatever _took_ Superman," he told him as he turned to the door himself. "I just need to prove it, and then find a way to track them both down."

"I'm sure the villainous scoundrel would be delighted to be spared an extra life sentence, but….how do you intend to prove such claims, sir? I'm not sure the court is ready to accept your….uncanny gift of deductive reasoning as evidence."

"True enough. Which is why I need to speak to some experts after I find the evidence I need to support my theory, and find out what did happen to Earth's two greatest heroes," he told his longtime friend.

"I'm sure if anyone can, sir, then you will."

Bruce said nothing as he went to the door he selected. One that opened on a dark shaft that went straight down into the bowels of the earth itself. Alfred, by choice, chose the more conventional method of using the bedroom door to depart.

_**S**_

"You want what," the silvering head of the scientist turned super-villain sputtered as he looked up at the caped vigilante that had helped thwart him for years. Right up to that point one of his force beams struck the Amazon bitch hard enough to overwhelm her defenses, and vaporize her.

Something that had shocked even him at the time. He had not realized they were that deadly.

Not that he had time to celebrate. The Bat had quickly disarmed him, fueled by his rage over the loss of his colleague, and had delivered him to the authorities, and a surprisingly speedy trial aided by recovered security footage that showed him clearly aiming at Wonder Woman's back as she deflected his henchmen's gunfire that would have cut down nine hostages in the bank in cold blood.

The moment when his beam struck her full in the back, vaporizing her, still chilled even him.

"The exact frequency of the light beam you used when you were firing those force beams that day," the grim hero said in that cool, gravelly tone he had that tended to cut right through your spine vertically, and into your very heart.

"Why," he spat. "So you can steal my work after you locked me in here for defending myself," he demanded, which had been his only defense. One the jury didn't buy.

Neither did the cold eyes that narrowed on him.

"Listen very carefully," the Bat growled at him. "There is a chance, a very slim chance, that you may not have killed Diana."

"Wonder Woman's not dead," he frowned. "Then…." "Shut up, and listen," the hero snapped in a low voice made all the more menacing by the way his cape fluttered as his body leaned forward, as if he were about to strike at him right through two inches of reinforced safety glass that made up the partition between them.

Dr. Light didn't think that barrier would hold for a second if the Bat wanted him. He was absolutely positive of that.

He had heard how the cowled hero had gotten in and out of Arkham countless times without being seen by anyone other than those he went to visit. Usually to pull information out of recalcitrant enemies for one of his endless campaigns against those he deemed evil.

"When you struck her with that force-beam, I need to know the precise frequency of the light that hit her."

"I'm right. Aren't I? I mean, if she's not dead, I can appeal this death sentence, and…..?" "The frequency," the darkly clad hero growled. "Or you'll wish you were already dead."

The villainous scientist took one look at those slitted, opaque eyes locked on him, and did what any man in his situation would do. He began to talk.

_**S**_

"I think Diana is still alive," Batman told the assembled members of the League he had specifically called to the meeting he had arranged in the Watchtower, rather than risk eavesdroppers at the earthbound headquarters that had become a sieve between the media, government agencies from across the globe, and even a few part-time heroes that cared more about the fame than the job.

Not one of the five said so much as a word as they looked around amongst themselves, measuring one another's reactions. Finally, John Stewart, back on Earth to relieve Kyle who had been called to a deep-space mission that was apparently hush-hush Guardian business shook his head.

"Batman, I'd be the first to say I'd like to believe you, but….we were all there when Dr. Light blasted her with that laser."

"Exactly. All of you were there, but did any of us stop in the heat of the moment to examine the evidence.

"My….subconscious finally got my attention after five years of bad dreams."

They all looked at him, but no one replied to that. Everyone knew the grim nature of the man beneath the cape and cowl, but everyone knew he had saved their collective lives more times than they could count with his sometime infuriating paranoia, and seemingly over-preparedness.

"All right, Batman," J'onn J'onzz asked. "I don't have to be a mind reader to know you have something in mind. Please, enlighten us. I, for one, would be ecstatic if one of our bravest and best were still alive somewhere."

"That's just it," he smiled his grim, characteristic smile. "I don't think she's the only one. I think whatever happened to her, happened to Superman first."

"Superman," Captain Atom exclaimed. "Batman, it's been almost fifteen years since he disappeared without a trace. We've hunted for him for….."

"I know," he cut Atom off before the oftentimes rigid military man could convince the others of things he had yet to say.

"Just listen to what I have learned, and then let me show you something."

"I believe our companion is entitled to be heard out," Dr. Fate's sonorous voice echoed from behind his helmet. "We all know he is not a man given to impulse, or false claims."

"I agree," the Flash spoke for the first time, his mercurial nature not slowed in the slightest by the years that had finally added maturity to the younger hero's features. "Bats may be a bit scary, but I've never known him to be wrong."

Batman caught J'onn's steady stare, and John's faint nod, and cleared his voice to speak.

"We've all lived the nightmare of Diana's apparent passing for more than five years.

"This week, I started putting a few things together, however, that makes me think she, and Superman, are still alive. That they were not killed, but….taken somehow."

He could see the doubt, confusion, and more written on some of the faces he knew well, but only J'onn and Fate kept their reactions well masked. Fate for obvious reasons, and the Martian, he knew, was a master of stoicism.

"How about an explanation," Nathaniel asked as he went on, explaining he felt something else was involved in plucking the missing heroes from their ranks.

"I have one. Tentative, true, but it's a start, and that is why each of you is here.

"First, let me show you something I managed to isolate."

He turned, and activated a monitor on the conference room walls. The chaos of the all-out battle with the flagging Legion of Doom that tried to reform after Luthor's apparent reformation filled the screen, and he quickly isolated Diana, standing in front of the hostages while the Legion's henchmen fired wildly at them, trying to buy time to escape.

The image froze, rotating almost eighty degrees until they had a side view of the powerful Amazon, and her determined profile as she stood with bracelets blurred even in the stopped still, she was moving so fast to deflect the lead rain from the innocents behind her.

"I always felt something was wrong about this moment, and I finally found it.

"I slowed this down almost ninety-seven percent before I finally found my first clue. Watch carefully."

In almost torturous slowness, Light rose behind Diana, having taken cover behind the hostages himself as the more powerful members of the League battled the other metas he had recruited. They watched as frame after frame the villain's dark scowl turned, and he lifted a thick wrist that was actually a trademark gauntlet to point at Diana's back.

They were ready to protest this macabre show until they saw the moment of apparent death. The moment that Diana vanished, reacting as if she were pulled into a powerful vacuum three frames before the beam of light even struck her former position.

"There," Batman said with all the conviction of the righteous. "You see?"

"We all saw it, Batman," J'onn murmured, though his voice betrayed his own emotion for one of those rare times the Martian let his true feelings out.

"I ran a full spectrum on the light-beam just in case, and I have even rechecked with Dr. Light himself concerning the frequency and strength of his force-beam. I retested his equipment myself to be certain of that fact. It could not have done what we just saw."

"Especially since she disappeared before it ever struck her," Wally stated unnecessarily. "So what did happen," he asked, looking back and forth between the stopped image that now showed only a stunned group gaping at where their colleague had been.

"I ran all the available video evidence through every scanner I could, but I didn't find anything until I tried studying the audio track."

"Audio track?" "Of course," Nathaniel nodded. "Sound has differing frequencies, just as light. Some of which can only be detected by……"

"This frequency," he said, using the remote to rewind the tape, and playing it at a super slow rate once more, "Sounded for just .four seconds before Diana vanished," he told them as a shrill, grating whine filled the speakers, and jarred their hearing.

For a moment, every man in the room felt an odd vertigo, then the world stabilized, and they were staring at a blank screen once again.

"That is my evidence," Batman told them somberly. "And that is why I have sent for each of you.

"Dr. Fate, if there is any mystical source to this sound, this….phenomena, I would like you to see if you can find it. You would know more than any of us if this phenomena has a supernatural source."

"I shall begin my research immediately," the blue and gold garbed mystic hero nodded as he stepped back from the table, and simply vanished.

"Walter, Nathaniel, you both have insights into the physical world, and its underlying principles that none of us can duplicate. I would like you to revisit the scene, and using this frequency as a guide, see if you can detect anything that might have…..caused this sound, and its results."

"You really think Superman got snatched like Diana, then," Wally asked bluntly.

"I think it's possible. Remember, Clark's mother mentioned he had said he was first woke up by a strange sound right before he disappeared."

"Still, Batman, if the strongest of us could be taken by whatever that sound was, how are we going to help if they haven't been able to return after all this time?" "I don't know. I don't know anything else at this point. Other than I am absolutely certain they are both still alive, and waiting to be found," he told Captain Atom.

"We'll do what we can," Nathaniel told him as the silver hero rose to stand beside his chair. "I have a job the brass want taken care of in Panama, but after that, I'll get right on this one." "I appreciate that, Captain," Batman nodded. "And while it goes without saying, I would prefer this search did not become common knowledge until we know something definitive one way, or the other."

"We know the drill, Bats," the Green Lantern who now lived in another space sector with his wife Shayera, once better known as Hawkgirl, nodded. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to contact the Guardians," he told the Lantern who was only back temporarily to fill in for the younger Lantern now patrolling their sector. "We both know they are notorious for holding information close to the vest, as it were. Find out if they know anything about this matter that might help us in our search."

"What will you and I be doing," J'onn asked as the others rose from the table, heading toward the transporters.

"I want you to go with me to Themyscira."

"You intend to see Diana's mother?" "No.

"That is, not in particular. I want to speak to Harbinger. Either she, or one of the Amazon's gods may know something. She is our best source of information from _that_ arena."

"Queen Hippolyta may not take to men just invading her realm again, especially without Diana as our emissary this time."

"I've already contacted the queen to arrange an audience after briefing her on my suspicions," Batman told him in the same forbidding tone. "She's expecting us."

"Of course," J'onn said, never failing to be surprised by his companion's cleverness in spite of being a telepath. Not that he abused that talent. "I cannot help but wonder, though….."

"What," Batman asked as they approached the transporter even as the others vanished.

"If they were….taken somewhere else, just what have they been doing all this time?" "I've wondered myself," he murmured as he stepped onto the transporter pad, and nodded to the masked heroine on duty that day.

Huntress barely glanced at them as she stared at the coordinates he had requested earlier, and punched them into the computer before sending them back to Earth.

_**S**_

"Clark," Diana shouted as she rose into the sky, the leaking tanker trailing volatile liquid that threatened to explode any second as the flames below began to attempt to follow the spill to its airborne source.

Even as she shouted, a colorful blur flew by too fast to track, and the flame vanished even as a blast of super-cooled air rose around her. A glance to her left showed the oil storage tanks were cooling, too, and only a few of them still smoldered.

Setting the leaking tanker atop a ruptured storage tank to let the fuel spill back into the open container, she rose back into the sky to see if anything else required her immediate attention. She grimaced as she saw the devastation left behind by the lightning strike that had turned the fuel storage facility into a deadly inferno for several minutes before she and Clark could arrive to help.

What sickened her most were the charred corpses of those they had not arrived in time to save. Nothing could bring those poor people back, but she frowned all the more as she flew down to where Clark stood studying something on the ground near one tank that looked more like it had imploded than exploded.

"This was no lightning strike," he told her grimly as he studied the jagged wound in the damaged tank as sirens of rescue and fire units only then began to announce their arrival.

"Someone deliberately destroyed this tank to start this inferno?" "Yes. The lightning from the storm was just happenstance. The damage was done by this device," he said, having gathered a few scorched fragments that obviously composed a timer, and wiring harness that had been attached to some kind of explosive.

"Another test," she guessed, both of them having reached the conclusion that someone was out there arranging seemingly random tests of their strengths and abilities of late that ran from one extreme to the next. Ironically, while much of the world knew they were here by now, very few people actually knew how she and Clark had saved the world from a horrendous alien threat that fateful day they made a united stand against the American military on their island. The dimensional rift had been written off as a hoax by most. Or special effects to sell something by others. Those that had not seen the startling footage had been more interested in the latest reality show airing to even care that their world had been in mortal danger.

Then, too, there were the many conspiracy theorists who wrote the entire thing off as mass hysteria created by a secret lab somewhere that leaked a biological weapon that created a series of bizarre, but strangely uniform delusions.

Diana wanted to ask why they were being tested now, but in the time she had been on this version of Man's World, she had seen more madness than even their own world offered at times.

"This emergency is over," Clark told her, looking up from the charred fragments he held to catch the look of dismay in her eyes. "You head back, and I'll catch up after I brief the authorities."

"Not an auspicious start to the day," she sighed as she turned to see the arriving paramedics stop to gape at her more than they were looking to the wounded that yet needed their aid.

"We saved some lives, and kept this from turning into a worse disaster," he told her. "Never discount our efforts, or our influence. Sometimes hope isn't easy to hold, but it's all we have."

"You're right," she sighed, remembering Artemis' charge given just a few months ago when it seemed they were alone against this entire world.

They had gained some acceptance among most of the nations, though some still looked with suspicion, or outright disdain at her in particular. Women on this world still had a long way to go before they could claim true equality, or freedom. Especially in certain parts of the world.

"I'll meet you back home," she told him, and leapt up into the air to use the air currents to fly up to her hovering aircraft built for her by Clark after he had finished their island' new defenses.

New Themyscira couldn't be taken by anything less than an army now, if that, with the new defenses he had built around their island home. Blending his Kryptonian science with the technology around them, he had still managed to surpass anything the humans of this dimension could ever hope of reaching at their current level of development. Their liaison with the American government had been quite interested in the alien technology, especially the medical sciences, but both of them had downplayed that angle.

"I would no more give children a loaded weapon, as hand them technology they are not ready to utilize properly," Clark had sagely replied to the woman who had ironically been swayed to their side by Diana's brutal treatment by her own government when she had first arrived on the planet.

Settling into her aircraft that she had left to hover high over the oil field, out of sight among the clouds and smoke that still covered the skies, she closed the hatch, and took manual control of the aircraft that was five times faster than anything on the planet. She kept the speed low, all the same, not wanting to alarm anyone as she flew over American airspace before banking away from the southern coastline, and out to sea. Once out of their airspace, she accelerated again, and turned toward her home, as she now considered their island, still musing over how to broach a touchy subject with Clark she had been pondering of late.

She was not quite to the island when she heard a mayday being radioed from north of her position, and turned toward it without hesitation. She did not care that it came in Egyptian rather than English. One point she had refused to yield on when Ms. Graves had first contacted them to start building diplomatic relations with them, was that she and Clark were here to help all people. No matter their politics, or race. She did not care if someone was not from an accepted country, or nation in the eyes of others. She was here to help all men, and hoped her example would eventually inspire others to follow their example.

She remembered Artemis had told her that together, she and Clark had technically fulfilled her first charge from the gods on their own world. They had inspired others to rise up, helped inspire, and after a fashion create new heroes and heroines that would eventually unite the many nations to lead their own world into a better future. Not all of those metas, after all, she was reminded, wore costumes.

Now, she had been told, they were sent here to repeat their first, and most important mission on this world. To inspire, and help steer the people of this world toward a future that would not end in the inevitable cataclysm the gods foresaw for this grim, militaristic world bent on self destruction. She, and her companion had been unknowingly dropped into a madhouse, sent unwittingly to repeat a success they had never truly felt they had achieved on a world that didn't seem to care for them.

So far, even with Clark at her side, she felt like she was fighting a loosing cause. Little wonder, she still kept much of Artemis' cryptic, and at some points, grim message from her companion. Better to leave him his own blissful ignorance, than to reveal yet another bit of evidence that the gods could be uncaring when it came even to those they favored at times.

_**S**_

"Tell me you have something," General Billings demanded after he walked into the covert laboratory, still incensed after watching the latest display of unnatural power by the two aliens that had invaded his world, and his nation.

Dr. Jacob McKinley barely shrugged as he turned from the microscope as he eyed the officer who had installed him, and his team in the research facility in a location so secret even he wasn't sure were he was at the moment. Of course, being all but abducted, and transported while unconscious helped maintain that secrecy. Especially with the only elevator out of the lab guarded by two men with detonators as well as the usual weapons.

One might risk conventional weaponry in a bid for freedom, but if the guards didn't input a certain code within one minute of anyone using the only way up and out of the apparently underground facility, then the entire shaft exploded, along with everything underground.

Hardly an incentive to risk a bid for freedom.

"I'm not sure what we have, to be honest," the oldest scientist on the ten man team replied. And they were all men. Billings had vocally stated he didn't want some emotional female screwing things up.

"Just report," the officer spat, noting that Jacob had sent everyone out of the lab for their meeting as he had ordered.

"First scope," he pointed, "Is the single hair we finally managed to acquire from the alleged Kryptonian.

"Frankly, I cannot even begin to decipher his DNA. If his own world's scientists did, then they must be true geniuses. I can't even begin to map the genome that houses his genetic makeup, let alone his apparent abilities.

"I hope that isn't all you had to report," the general said in a harsh tone as he turned from the bizarre image of the alien genetic matrix only partially represented by the single hair follicle recovered from the Hastings' home after a special team had been sent through it with a forensic team to look for anything that might reveal the alien's abilities, or weaknesses.

"Second scope," Jacob gestured to the one he had been using.

"I trust you had better luck with the tissue and blood cultures taken from the prisoner at Guantanamo."

"What do you see?" "Wait one damn minute. What is this," the scowling officer demanded as he turned to him after a second glance into the microscope.

"You tell me. That is what we got from your contacts, sir."

"Even I know that isn't blood, or skin. It's….…It's……."

"Dirt.

"Specifically, a kind of clay.

"Not being a geologist, I cannot isolate its origin for you, but having grandchildren, I can guess it is Mid-Atlantic in origin."

"And what does being a grandparent have to do with…..?"

"Haven't you even looked at the books, general," Jacob McKinley asked him pointedly. "I've been reading them as avidly as my grandchildren since the media first broke this story."

"I assume you have a point to make here," the officer asked curtly.

"You haven't read them, have you," Jacob sighed.

"General," Jacob told him. "In the back story of the alleged….Amazon, she was made from clay after the queen of the Amazons prays to her gods for a child. Clay that is miraculously given life, and gifted with incredible powers by what we know as the mythical Greek Pantheon."

"So, the Greeks created her….?" "You're missing the point. This heroine was fashioned out of clay according to the stories.

"Clay infused with the powers of all the gods when it was magically brought to life."

"So, you are telling me this….clay is magic?" "I believe that once….tissue, or blood is left behind, it must….revert to its original state. Without the magic of the host body to sustain it, I believe it becomes ordinary clay once more. Which would explain these samples."

"Just tell me how this helps us," General Billings spat irritably as he glanced back at the thin spread of dry clay on the slide.

Jacob warred with his own conscience for a moment, and then remembered his grandchildren. The ones the general had threatened to shoot them himself if he didn't give him his best work. The war didn't last long.

"If I'm right, we might be able to devise a way to sap the woman's energies, be it magic, or whatever, from the female's body. If I'm right, that leaves nothing but an inanimate, clay stature behind.

"After all, all the reports we have indicated she was already weak when first found. That implies she not only might, but _can_ lose her power. And if it happened once, then it can happen again."

The general's smile spread slowly across his thin, almost skeletal features. He was a man that looked as if he enjoyed deprivation. Maybe he did. "And if you could drain that energy from the bitch," Thomas Billings smiled coldly, having little use for women in general as any true misogynist did, "You could theoretically infuse it back into another host afterward. Right?"

"I don't honestly know.

"I'm still calculating the time, factors, and energies involved in the apparent decay of these samples from living tissue to dry earth in the time frame presented since they were first taken.

"If my speculations are correct, I might be able to devise a theory as to what manner of radiation, or power, fuels the host, and how it could be….manipulated. It might even give us an indication as to the true nature of whatever 'gods' gave her those powers in the first place."

"Consider the last a command, doctor. It's not enough to simply neutralize one of them. We need an agent that can stand up against the other.

"So far, we have nothing.

"I want that weapon, and you will make it for me.

"Just remember what happens do you fail," he spat as he turned to leave the lab. "And next time you contact me, I expect more from you than a few samples of common earth."

Jacob sighed as he watched the man leave, and shook his head.

Pompous ass, he thought, but did not dare voice aloud.

He had no wish to hurt anyone. Let alone a woman that had apparently suffered enough just coming to their world from all he had heard. For even he could guess there was a lot of gaps in the clinical reports made available to them, and the reality that woman must have faced before she was rescued by her super-powered companion. Still, he had no way of contacting anyone outside the lab to warn them. No way to reach anyone that might be able to help them. If only he did. But who could help him? Especially here, in whatever prison that maniac had locked him, and his team in, determined to overturn his scandalous resignation for his role in the fiasco that first revealed to the world that there were heroes, real heroes, alive and well on Planet Earth.

If only he could reach someone….anyone….He might be able to warn someone.

To warn _them_.

_**S**_

Bruce had his cowl back as he ran the information through his powerful supercomputers that had covert access to date from all over the globe. Fate had found nothing of a mystical nature when he had investigated, so far as he could tell. Considering he was likely the most powerful mystic in his acquaintance, that was saying something. He had already guessed as much when he spoke with Harbinger after doing the usual prerequisite, and polite banter with the Amazon queen. All in vain, for the woman had nothing she could tell him.

All she knew was that Clark and Diana were beyond her sight. The gods, she added, were simply silent on the matter. As usual.

The implication, however, was that they were alive, but simply some place that kept even her arcane sight from penetrating whatever barriers masked them to see where they were, and what was being done to them. J'onn later confirmed her words were true, not that he didn't trust her.

Well, perhaps to a degree.

More promising were the reports back from Wally, and Nate. Both reported finding an odd sensation they couldn't explain. Nate was more forthcoming in stating he had sensed a small tear in the spatial continuum that had not quite healed even after all this time. He was reluctant to explore it further, and he explained bluntly that he had no idea what trying to probe the semi-healed rift might do to him, or the world around him. He mentioned quantum super-positioning, which implied that an infinite array of possibilities that existed simultaneously beyond the realm perceived might be involved, and to simplify the theory, that only by seizing on one as the most immediate reality did one perceive that reality.

He suspected that something, or someone, had shattered the dimensional probabilities, and drawn their companions into any one of those infinite realities beyond their own. He simply couldn't begin to track them, or attempt to probe that rift without causing some unanticipated calamity they did not wish to come about if he were wrong.

Still, Nathan's certainty that there was a path beyond their world bolstered Batman's own beliefs.

Pooling their collected data, except for John's report as the Lantern had yet to return, he was now running all possible scenarios through his computer, and reexamining every conclusion himself. If there was anything to find, he would find it. If there was any chance, however remote, of bringing their missing teammates back, he would take it.

He would not allow himself to rest until he was certain one way or the other that his colleagues were safe.

He just hoped the Guardians were more forthcoming than usual, and could, or would help them.

Wherever they were now.

_**S**_

Clark hovered over the floundering ship Diana had pulled into the Spanish harbor just before he arrived, and waited for her to return from reporting to the officials on the scene who viewed the ship with some suspicion due to the recent rash of terrorist bombings in their nation the previous week.

"You handled that well," he told her as she hovered in the air, using the air currents as easily as she had ever done now that her powers had been restored in the new world they had come to only recently.

"Do you think so," she asked.

He gave her a faint smile, understanding her frustration as she hovered in the air before him as she waited for her aircraft to circle back toward her.

"I wanted to bash in their thick, empty skulls," she admitted. "Calling me a whore for showing myself to men without _proper_ covering."

"They were a part of our world, too, Diana," she was told as she slipped down into the cockpit as her aircraft slowed just enough as it neared her to allow her to board.

"I know that, Clark," she told him before the cockpit slid closed, switching to the comlink frequency they shared again thanks to Dr. Chang's cleverness in adapting their old Justice League transponders to a new communications system. "It's just…..they were grateful enough to be saved when I first showed up.

"Only the moment we reached shore, and other witnesses, they turned back to that patriarchal nonsense most men seem to enjoy using as a hammer to keep down women on…..

"Well, on almost every world I've ever visited as yet," she huffed moodily when she caught his expression.

"I understand how you feel, Diana.

"But isn't that why your gods sent you here? To help show these people that they, women included, can be so much more? To give them a chance to learn what you've been teaching so admirably, and so well for years back home?"

She sighed, and smiled up at him where he flew alongside her aircraft, and then laughed.

"You still see the good in everything, don't you," she accused him lightly.

"I try."

"Maybe that's why you ended up here, too?"

"Your gods didn't say?"

"The gods are very good at _not_ saying things even while addressing you in the floweriest of speeches," she admitted, not wishing to burden him with the fact he was taken as purposely as she.

"I had noticed," he grinned as they turned back toward their island, remembering a few less than welcome encounters he had experienced at her side when her gods were involved.

"Listen, Clark," she suddenly blurted, deciding she couldn't duck the matter forever. "There is something I have been wanting to discuss with you."

"You can talk to me about anything, Diana," he told her. "You know that."

"I know," she replied. "You can, too, Clark."

"I'm fine," he assured her.

"You haven't said much about….your wife."

Clark sobered, his smile fading as they flew on, the island within sight now.

"There isn't much to say, is there," he asked her pointedly. "You told me it had been nine years since I….left even before you had disappeared.

"Who knows how the time lapse works here, or how much time has passed now. Even Lois wouldn't wait forever, and I wouldn't expect her to have to do so."

"Clark….."

"It's all right, Diana. I have accepted it."

"Of course you have," she drawled.

"Well, I am working on it," he replied with a faint smile.

"So am I, Clark," she told him with a wry expression. "So am I."

They flew on without speaking for a time.

Then the next call for her inevitably sounded over their comlinks.

_**S**_

"If I am right, they will have left a definitive energy signature that can be traced through the dimensional walls to whatever…..place or time they were taken," Bruce told Robin as he studied the data flowing over the computer screens before him in endless loops. "It's just a matter of detecting the pattern, and then using it to track whatever force….." "It's a matter of going blind if you keep staring at that crap much longer," the teen hero told him, grabbing the arm of his chair to spin the brooding man around. "And don't forget, we still have Bane out there tearing up Gotham again."

"I haven't forgotten him. He's a minor annoyance, at best.

"He will hit the diamond exchange tonight, and that is where we will catch him. In the meantime….."

"In the meantime, get some rest, because starting at the squiggly lines, and flashing lights is going to drive you nuts. As I'm sure Alfred will agree," Robin added as he caught sight of the ever dapper manservant as he descended into the cave with a covered tray of hot food with an uncanny grace and dignity in spite of his advancing age.

"Actually, Master Drake, I've long since given up commenting on the deplorable state of my employer's mental state."

"Funny," Bruce growled. "I didn't know you were a comedian, Alfred."

"Whatever made you think I was joking, sir," Alfred asked with deadpan aplomb.

"Fine, fine. I'll give it a rest. As soon as I set the scan to alert me whenever….." "Eat. Rest. I _can_ handle the tech stuff. Remember?" Bruce stared at Tim, shook his head, and nodded. "I know. Just….make sure you keep the variables in mind when….."

Tim's stern stare cut him off, reminding him that the younger man had a streak of steel in his own spine when he wished to use it. He chuckled quietly, rubbed a hand over his whiskered chin, and said, "Well, I could use a shave, too.

"I don't think the city is ready for a bearded Batman."

"Heaven, forbid," Alfred drawled as he pointedly handed the tray to Bruce before he could pass.

_**S**_

Thomas ignored the press that hounded him of late.

Ever since the president had assigned that bitch that had snitched on them in the first place as the first ambassador to those aliens, he had heard nothing but bad news. Bad enough he had to publicly apologize for being a patriot, or so he viewed it. He even had to step down, and give his command to a man with less than half his experience, and none of his drive. A man that would rather compromise, and excuse America's enemies than face them with resolve.

Men like that made him sick.

These unnatural foreigners made him sick.

He wasn't finished, though. Not just yet.

You didn't serve your country as long as he had without making friends, or establishing contacts that could be used even after you were forced out of your career. He had been using his own not inconsiderable wealth to finance the setting of traps all across the globe for the two would-be champions for weeks now, but so far, all he had done was allow them to garner more praise, and more favorable media coverage.

They simply did not seem to have any limitations on their powers.

Even the female had grown in power and ability to the point she was now flying, and tossing around armored vehicles like kiddy cars. All his tests indicated they had likely yet to even show the true potential of those powers as they proved more than a match for anyone, or anything thrown at them to date.

He was beginning to think even a tactical nuke might not stop _these _aliens.

Not a good thing from his perspective.

And it had cost him out the ass, on top of using up a lot of favors to get those tissue samples out of the lab down on the Clinton.

Still, if the head geek had really found something, he might not only be able to neutralize the bitch, he could take her powers for himself. Powers he could use to become a true American champion, put down that pretentious clown in long underwear, and then take care of his country's enemies once and for all.

Yes, he could do all of that.

He just had to ensure his science boys were properly motivated.

Maybe an execution, he mused solemnly.

Nothing like a public execution to motivate those soft-hearted liberal sorts that felt everyone should just throw down their weapons, hold hands, and sing happy songs. As if that were all that was needed to change the world.

Morons. Worse. Hippies.

He sneered at the thought of those useless, drugged-out zombies that had grown up to infiltrate the country with their filth and nonsense at virtually every level. Bad enough they had spit on brave soldiers when they were young. Now they were turning the country into a weak-kneed socialist copy of itself that was afraid to even speak up for itself any longer. Even their liberally minded offspring weren't worth the cost of a bullet to put them down.

Well, he'd fix them all.

He'd show them true power, and set his beloved country back on the straight and narrow. And he would start by getting rid of those so-called heroes who didn't even have the guts to act like real Americans, if that was what they wanted to be.

After that, the sky was the limit he mused privately with a secretive smirk. He could even take the White House, and show the country what a strong, determined man of principle could do with the power of right on his side.

He'd show the _world_.

_To Be Continued……._


	6. Chapter 6

_I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy._

_**SUPER **_

**By LJ**

**Part 6:**

"We have decided to stay here permanently, if you will allow it," Dr. Chang told him as he and his wife met with Clark and Diana that afternoon once they returned from whatever had occupied the heroes on the American mainland that particular day.

"Of course," Diana told him when Clark only nodded. "In fact, Clark and I were discussing a means of reaching more people earlier with the core of a message we wished to share. How would you feel about being….well, de facto instructors for those we might try to reach?"

"We would be honored," the other Dr. Li told her quietly. "Only we are hardly qualified for such an august position. We are more….."

"We need someone with intelligence, and the willingness to teach on an ethical basis," Clark told Alicia. "In that, I think you are both more than qualified."

"What I intend," Diana, now clad in a diaphanous ivory gown, told them as she played hostess, pouring tea for them as she relaxed in a private room in the veritable palace that had grown up from their smaller sanctuary on the island by then. "Is to bring select young men and women to this island to be educated not only in the usual arts and sciences, but in the ethical and moral lessons that seem to be lacking in this world of late."

The pair absorbed this as Diana went on.

"Afterward, they will be sent back into the world to spread that message, and hopefully encourage more to think, and believe as you, and we…..that the betterment of _all_ people is the concern of this world, and its respective governments. Not just the purview of a few religious leaders."

"It is a bold idea, and an ambitious one," Laura Hastings told them quietly as she sat up, having been listening to them without comment until then. "And, I think, an admirable one. I knew there was more to you than just colorful costumes, and the obvious brawn."

Clark smiled at the older woman, and nodded as he sat there still in costume, still overly conscious of his cape when around her for some reason. Of course, she had been the one to make his first costume in this world. Maybe that was part of it. He tended to look upon her almost as a mother figure, as in some ways she did remind him of his own mother.

Not that Martha Kent would have raised such ungrateful, grasping children as Laura had back in the States.

They were still trying to have their mother declared incompetent in court to gain control of the substantial wealth she still controlled, and had turned over to him and Diana to aid their island's development after giving them shares that obviously did not satisfy them. It seemed the Hastings' children didn't have their mother's vision.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hastings," Diana told her serenely. "I just wish more of the world felt the same way."

"Oh, dear. The U.N. turned you down?"

"They do not feel we are a unifying influence," Clark drawled. "And as the Saudis control the assembly this year, they are especially offended that Diana wants to present herself as a representative to their body."

"Men," Laura huffed. Then she looked at Clark and Chang, and added, "Most men, anyway. Even my Henry was a bit of a misguided misogynist at times. God rest his soul."

"Lois used to say the same thing about me," Clark murmured. "Usually right before she got herself into trouble," he sighed, looking wistful.

All of them were used to Clark's occasional bouts of melancholy, but no one spoke.

"So, can we count on you to help us start our school," Diana asked the scientists who had become fixtures on the island after the Chinese government discredited them as traitors, and defectors in the wake of the aborted dimensional invasion that had almost cost them the planet. The rumor was that there were now actually bounties on their head, and did they try to leave the island, someone would likely try to collect.

Rumors such as that were a part of their decision to stay. More importantly, they felt they had much more to learn here, and with Clark and Diana protecting them, they could continue their research without fearing every idea they had would be turned into a weapon.

"I still have some media connections from my earlier contact with your area networks," Clark mulled as he nodded at Laura before looking back to Diana. "I could arrange to have you unveil our plans to the people there, and I'm sure they would broadcast the appeal globally when they realize the cause is a good one," he added.

"It would be worth a try," Diana sighed, having grown a little frustrated, and very indignant, at being cut off from so many of the venues that had been opened to her back on their Earth. "But you both should stand with me. It would look better that way," Diana replied.

"That's a very good idea," Laura agreed. "I'd have gone back home already, but since those ungrateful brats of mine have that injunction they keep trying to serve every time I return to the States, I don't dare show up where they can find me. I swear, if Henry were alive…. Well, you can't help how they turn out, can you," she sighed wearily with a bit of indignation of her own.

"Maybe they will relent when they realize the good you are helping us do," Diana told her quietly, liking the woman just as much as Clark. Even she was astonished her own children were trying to have her declared incompetent, and wanted to somehow claim control of the monies she still held by using that claim to stop her 'funding' the other-dimensional heroes.

"All right," Clark agreed as he glanced around. "We'll consider just what to say before we show up, and in the meantime, Chang. Alicia. We'll leave you to set up a viable classroom environment for any potential guests, and consider what you might need to begin. We don't know how many might first accept our offer, but we're hoping to start with at least twenty, or thirty."

Alicia laughed.

"What is it," Diana asked.

"You're more likely to hear from forty or fifty….._thousand_. Or even more. You've not been reading the web-blogs lately. Have you?"

Diana's expression was eloquent. "After the last few thousand requests I 'bare' myself completely for their perverse appetites, I quit reading any of them."

"Well, there are more than a few that care about more than your body, dear. There are thousands of young people out there asking genuinely sincere questions, and seeking answers they hope you can offer them in preparing them for life. I would say your real problem is going to be how to weed out those first few from the clamor you're likely to create with your offer," the Chinese-British scientist smiled.

"We should also speak to Ms. Graves, then," Diana decided. "She will be our liason with those seeking a legitimate place here. That way we don't have to open ourselves to the unscrupulous, or the potential frauds sure to try to exploit this opportunity."

"I agree. I'll contact her before I contact the networks to get her input as well," Clark suggested. "We both already know there will more than enough people looking to manipulate your offer," he reminded her, thinking of some of the schemers he had met himself back home. All out for a fast buck, notoriety, or just some means of leverage over him.

Diana simply nodded, understanding perfectly.

_**S**_

"Well," he asked as Thomas' specter hung over his head as the new geologist imported for this part of his research eyed the clay samples.

"Definitely Mid-Atlantic in origin, with a few of the usual trace elements," the man told him, squinting through his spectacles. "However, I can see nothing…..nothing whatsoever to indicate that this is not just….ordinary clay.

"I'm not sure what our alleged benefactor is after here, but all he has is clay. Nothing more."

Jacob McKinley wanted to cry.

Hours of research, and even his protest he was not a geologist did not help since the gaunt scientist was delivered to them almost instant, but still he had nothing.

Nothing but an apparent timetable.

If this were part of that Amazon as he theorized, then it had taken roughly between two to three months for whatever energies that had empowered it to fade. That ruled out any known radioactive elements. It ruled out virtually any known energies, electrical or otherwise. Unfortunately, they were dealing with too many unknowns for him to draw any real conclusions.

"Bad news, I am taking from it? Your expression, I mean?"

"Yes," he told the reed-thin Frenchman. "The last man to disappoint our….host," he drawled cautiously, knowing they were being monitored after the way Allen were singled out last week. "Was executed for giving him bad news."

Jean gaped at him. "You must be kidding?"

"I wish I were," Jacob told him, remembering how Allen's brains had spattered half the lab when Billings had coldly and calmly forced him to face them while he shot him from behind, forcing them to stop and clean up before they could even continue their work.

The disgraced general, they were all sure, was quite mad.

Which did not help them in the slightest.

**S**

She woke bathed in sweat, and wishing she were anyone but who she was just then.

She had not had a dream like that in years. Decades, really. Okay, over a century. Frankly, she had not missed them, either.

Still, even she couldn't ignore it.

Even Circe, an immortal witch as old as the world itself, could not defy the gods when they spoke.

She sighed, rose from her bed, and padded naked toward her bath.

Anthropomorphic felines moved from the shadows to aid her, bringing her favorite perfumed soaps as she lowered herself into the hot spring that fed her marble bath. She let the heat soap into her bones as one of the attendants began to carefully scrub her long, dark locks, and the other soaped, and washed her limbs.

When her hair was fully washed, rinsed, and her attendant began drying it, she rose from the water, letting the other feline finish washing and rinsing her body.

"My dears, I'm afraid I have to leave. It may be a while before I return, so….I ask you this now. Do you wish to remain here as you are, or return to the city?"

"Here," both felines purred, bowing at her feet.

"We shall keep your home clean, and readied for your return, mistress," the one on her left assured her. "Do not send us away. We desire only your service."

She sighed again.

Well, of course they would say that. They were enchanted.

"We shall see," Circe murmured, and walked back to her room where a third attendant, also a feline, helped her dress in a white, silk robe with gold edging. Padded sandals, and a delicate tiara of polished sandalwood that looked almost metallic due to its sheen crowned her now braided hair, and she looked quite stylish for most any affair.

Except the one now laying before her.

Internal, interfering gods. It had been half a millennia. Couldn't they give it a rest?

She grumbled as she left her room, stepped out onto the tiled portico formed by huge, marble pillars, and stared out at her island paradise. She grumbled as she thought of another island, and its inhabitants. Or rather, one in particular.

It wasn't so much the gods had yet again conscripted her to carry out their will on the mortal plane. It was just that they were drawing her into a confrontation she had no wish to continue. Just over five years ago, the bane of her existence had vanished from the world. Supposedly slain. She had celebrated for weeks. Months, actually.

Now the gods came to her with the most bizarre errand she had ever heard. One that would ordinarily have been impossible even for her. Until they had given her the details that suggested it was not only possible, it was mandated.

Damn gods.

Still, she wouldn't mind seeing _him_ again. Their last meeting had been so…amusing.

Turning to consider her reflection, she added jeweled bracelets, and a necklace of iridescent shells from the deepest part of Poseidon's realm. If she was going to be acting as the god's envoy, she was darn well going to look the part. It wasn't often she had a real excuse for dressing up.

Considering her attendants again, she eyed them, then shrugged. "Take care of the place, and yourselves," she told them. "I shall return….. When I return."

A wave of her hand, and she vanished.

The three humanoid felines actually whimpered at her going.

**S**

"I believe I have something," Jacob told the crazed general as he looked up from his computer where he feverishly working on perfecting what was, in essence, a completely theoretical device that he hoped would save his life. And the lives of his fellow prisoners.

"What is that," Thomas Billings demanded, staring at the strange machine on the computer screen.

"A modified beryllium sphere," Jacob told him. "But altered for the purpose you….requested."

The general's frown made Jacob more than a little nervous.

"It's a superconductor that both insulates, and conducts heat or energy in special applications. While the raw element in beryllium oxide can be….toxic, by creating a levelized magnetic envelope by means of….."

Thomas glared.

"It'll suck the energy out of anything, or anyone standing inside the conducting rods," the scientist told him quickly.

"And you will be able to inject it into another," Thomas asked, eyes glittering in anticipation.

"It's…..theoretically possible," he stated, not sure himself, but knowing he didn't want anyone else to die. Especially not himself.

"What do you need to build it?"

"Well, most of the components can be found at Geo-Tech, and can be assembled on-site wherever you want to lay your…..snare. The thing is…."

"How to lure her in," Thomas murmured. "Or even the alien," he remarked, thinking of all the power the Kryptonian was alleged to possess.

"Uhm, actually, General Billings," he said, knowing you didn't address him as anything but an officer despite his less than honorable discharge. "I meant that we still need a coded operating system. And the only one I know that might be anywhere near powerful enough to run the program we would require is…."

"Well, in Berlin."

"Berlin?"

"The ESP has a new near complete AI that has enough raw calculating ability to run almost any program we could conjure, and still adapt to any….surprises that might come up along the way."

"You can't build….?"

"None of here have that expertise. We can integrate a hard drive, or build the component sphere I've designed, but…..it still comes down to the control systems. Well, that, and getting the, ah, specimen, into the containment field."

"That part will be easy enough, I think. With the right bait," the older man smirked knowingly. "Just tell me if there is an American counterpart that might do the job of this…..foreign computer."

"To be honest. I'm not aware of one," he admitted.

"Hmmph," he grumbled. "Well, I'll see about that. Meanwhile, order anything you need, and have it sent here. You'll assemble it above the complex. You will, however, not try to run, doctor. My men still have orders to shoot-to-kill if you or your lab-rats get the wrong ideas."

"You don't have to worry, sir," Jacob told him quietly. "We are committed to seeing this through to the end. The science, after all, is what interests us."

The older man just huffed, eyeing him suspiciously, but then turned to go. "Just see you remember that it's American science we're using here. Tell the duty sergeant how to order whatever you need. He'll see it's delivered. Now get back to work on finding a means of managing that caped alien. I still want them both neutralized, whatever happens next."

"Yes, sir," Jacob nodded, and gave a healthy sigh of relief when the man stalked off to the lift to return to the surface.

"You really think this containment sphere will do what you say," Dr. Abigail Waters, a new 'recruit' from the xenon-biology field asked.

One moment she had been lecturing at Cambridge on the possibility of extraterrestrial life forms, and then she was waking in an underground bunker with a death sentence hanging over her head if she didn't cooperate. She could care less about the lunatic, or his plans. She just wanted to get back to her family, and that meant playing along, too.

"I haven't the slightest idea, Abby," he admitted quietly, careful not to be overheard. "Frankly, it's all based on a science-fiction show I once watched as a teenager. But it's all I could think of to buy us more time." "So, that's why you stressed the European Space Agency's new computer AI was necessary."

"Yes. By the time he tries to figure a way around acquiring it, or a comparable device, hopefully we will have figured out a way out of this mess."

"And dare I hope you have a ploy for that, mon ami," Jean asked quietly, a bruise still darkening the left side of his cheek where he had dared the unstable man's temper earlier that week.

"Maybe," he said firmly, and said no more. He couldn't be sure they were not being monitored. Considering the madman's paranoia and lunacy, he wouldn't say anything more that might be considered 'treacherous' for that man's way of thinking.

Still, while he couldn't be sure if that sphere would work the way the general hoped, he did know he could use its structural design to send a high-frequency impulse that just might interest the one man on the planet with super hearing. Said impulse, hopefully, enough to bring him out to investigate.

Just then, it was all he had.

**S**

"Circe," the caped detective murmured as he leaned over a computer he was studying. "What brings you here?"

The woman couldn't help but feel impressed.

She had materialized silently behind the Batman in his dark cavernous lair, and he had not even glanced back. Yet still he had known she was there. He had known who she was, too. That truly impressed her.

"You continue to astonish, I see, Batman," she murmured, smiling as she stepped forward into the soft glow of the computer monitors. "As to why I'm here. You could say we are following the trail of a certain missing Amazon of mutual acquaintance."

He turned to face her, staring hard through the opaque slits of his cowl.

"You know about Diana."

"Naturally. We have had our….differences, she and I, but even I was astonished at how easily that common mortal allegedly slew her."

"Allegedly," Batman echoed grimly.

"I think we both know she is alive. And, apparently well considering my…..charge."

Batman eyed the ageless witch, assessing her appearance, and her manner. Considering that even Oa claimed they knew nothing of the missing heroes, and all other leads had gone cold, he had been left only with his own assertions, and no way to proceed. Even he knew that Circe was a conduit that was beyond his experience, though. Still, she was one that could not be dismissed, either.

"What do you know," he asked baldly.

"Well, my dear friend. She is alive."

"And Superman?"

"Oh, yes. Him, too."

His eyes narrowed, and he murmured, "And did you have anything to do with…..?"

"Me? Perish the thought, my darling," she cooed, raising a hand to his masked face, and smiling at him. "No. I do not have all the answers myself. But I am acting for those who do." Batman's mind took all of three-tenths of a second to assess the statement, and consider potential meanings.

"The Olympians?"

"Naturally. They just cannot help butting into the mortal worlds at times. Why, I've little idea. Frankly, I was quite enjoying myself when….."

"Where are they?"

"Far beyond your reach," Circe smiled.

"And yours?"

"I've been told I can reach them," she stated cryptically. "But I'll need your help. Which, of course, is why I'm here."

"You honestly expect me to believe you are trying to find, or even help Diana?"

"Well, when you put it that way," she sighed as his somber tone actually made even her shiver just a bit. But then he was such a formidable, and entertaining mortal. "Frankly, I wouldn't care if she rotted in that drab little world where she's been tossed. But, yes, I am charged with finding her, and taking a certain…..totem to her. i think even you know that one does not simply ignore the will of the gods. Whatever it might be."

"Can you bring them back," Batman demanded.

Circe looked somber herself now, and admitted, "To be honest, Batman. I'm not even sure _I'm_ coming back. They didn't say how to manage that, you see. Only how to get there."

"And where is there?"

"Another Earth," she smiled again. "Or wasn't that part obvious?"

"My colleagues said there was no way to trace….."

"Do you know how many multiple upon multiple dimensions actually exist, Batman?"

He said nothing to that.

"I'm sure you have heard of what your scientists call quantum super-position. Your people focus on space and time as a means of assessing the various dimensions beyond your own. That's all quite well and good. But sometimes, you simply need a different perspective. And….a bit of magic."

"Then perhaps I should call…."

"Your magical friends cannot do what the gods have charged me with doing, Batman," she smiled. "If you will aid me, though, I can at least reach them, and fulfill the god's commission. Whatever else it brings, I can do that much."

Batman continued to study her, assessing her intent and sincerity. In the end, even he had to accept a degree of….faith. "All right, Circe. What do we do?"

"To reach my objective, I need three things from you," she told him.

"Name them."

"We need the spear of Longinus."

He frowned at that.

"Captain Atom."

That was even more puzzling.

"And…..a night on the town. Just you and I….. Bruce."

Batman's jaw clenched.

"You'd better explain yourself," he growled.

"Oh, fine, fine. You're so touchy. I sometimes forget how gloomy you are. Which is surprising after that touching ballad you once sang for me. You showed such…..feeling."

Circe sighed, and rolled her eyes.

"The spear is not what you think. Well, it is, and it isn't. Frankly, it's older than you know, and has been around for centuries. The so-called spear, also know through time as Poseidon's trident, Excalibur, and a few other mystic weapons stolen or passed down through the ages, is in fact a sliver of one Zeus' own thunderbolt. _The_ thunderbolt."

"That explains a few things," he murmured. "Not why you need it."

"Because, with it, and the power of your energetic friend to fuel it, I can use it to travel safely to the realm where Diana and your caped friend have been transported."

"I'm assuming that means only you."

"The gods charged me with this quest, Batman," she sighed. "I could not vouch for any other that tried to follow. As I said, I am not even certain _I _shall be returning. I have only their assurance that I will reaching them."

Batman relaxed only slightly as he remarked, "And the night out….."

"Is a celebration of sorts before departure. Just in case I never get another chance with you, my handsome, young hero," she smiled. "You must know I have weakness for your sort."

"My sort," Batman growled.

"The strong, brooding hero type. Archetype, one might say. You're much like Odysseus, you know."

"I'll take your word on it."

"So, will you aid me?"

"It would seem I have little choice. For now."

"There is always a choice," she smiled, tracing his bat sigil on his broad chest. "But tonight, I wish to indulge. Tomorrow is soon enough for gods, and their quests."

Batman said nothing to that as he studied her.

"I'll go up and change. If you'll follow…me," he said, looking around as he realized he was abutply standing in the receiving hall of his manor, dressed in his best. Circe was at his side now wearing a very costly white silk gown that looked painted on her voluptuous frame.

"Why waste time," she cooed, and he opened the door with a bleak scowl to find Alfred just pulling the car around.

"Just so you understand that if something comes up….."

"Don't worry. Tonight, there will be no interruptions. You have my word," she smiled at him, taking his arm. "Tonight, is mine."

Bruce Wayne didn't smile at that one. It only made him more grim.

"Oh, come now. Even _Hades_ smiles now and then. Surely you can…..?"

"I can smile, Circe," he told her, doing just that, almost literally transforming his grim visage with the altered expression. "After all, I'm sure we both know all about wearing…..masks to suit the occasion."

"Touché, my modest hero," she smiled. "Come, take me someplace…..fun."

Alfred said nothing as he watched them climb into the car, still wondering how he had ended up in the limo at all, and in his best uniform. The last think he remembered was preparing for bed, knowing Batman would be out all night again.

"The Swann Club, Alfred," he told his friend and employee, keeping his smile in place, and looking more like the carefree playboy most took him to be. "Miss Circe and I have a certain discovery to celebrate."

"Indeed, sir," Alfred, ever conscious of the proprieties murmured, and put the car in gear.

_To Be Continued….._


	7. Chapter 7

_I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy._

_**SUPER **_

**By LJ**

**Part 7:**

Diana was sitting on the sloping hillside overlooking the temple/school that was now all but completed as five as of the fourteen young women who had been brought to the island raced around the track just behind the marble structure.

Exercise and training was such a part of her own regimen that she had included it in the curriculum of the school she had finally managed to open with Anna Graves' help. It had been months since Superman had driven back those Titans, and literally saved this new Earth they now inhabited. There were still people out there trying to 'test' them.

She had yet to approve any of the male candidates. As yet, none of them had passed the stringent background, and other tests set up by Ms. Graves, and herself. It someone disappointed her, because she wanted to include young people of both genders to prove to her detractors out there that she wasn't just a feminist icon, as one radio show tried to portray her.

She watched the women running, smiling at the sight of them, and remembering her own sisters back on Themyscira.

Clark was off patrolling again. They had set up random, alternating schedules so they could watch for real trouble, but not give whoever was out there sitting traps for them a predictable route or time where they might be located.

He was being melancholy again this week, but she understood. According the schedule working out by the Lis who now helped the academic side of the 'school,' they would have been missing close to twenty-two years by now based on Diana's own story, and the time differential they had been calculating.

By now, Lois was a much older woman. If she still survived. Their world was far from ideal, and Lois had always had a daring streak even before Clark Kent had come along to help her.

Diana wished she could help him. Comfort him. But so far he was, as back on their own world, still a very private person when it came to his individual concerns. She wasn't sure how Lois, or Bruce had been able to jolt him out of such moods when back home, but so far she was doing a pretty poor job.

Rising to her feet, she headed down to the others, knowing it was time to return to the classroom without needing a watch. The women paused to welcome her, and she found cause to smile. The three older teens, and the two twenty year old women were more than eager and happy to be here. The others had their own interests, but these five were quite happy to test body as well as mind when able. That spoke well for them.

She was going to have to talk to Clark about challenging the others. The nine other girls from fourteen to eighteen all favored sitting and learning all they could. Or sitting and absorbing what they could from either Clark's growing archive on his new computer, or the Lis' tales of China, physics, and foreign life. Unfortunately, several of them looked to truly need exercise. They simply shunned it.

"What's next," Ellie, the sixteen year old asked breathlessly as she waited for Diana to reach them.

"Ethics," she told them, and several sighed. "Followed by archery. Think we can get some of the others interested?"

"Maybe," the eighteen year old Paula grinned. "If you can offer prizes of some kind."

"Prizes," Diana murmured thoughtfully.

Even as the air around them began to grow heated, and Diana felt a simmering heat that had a vaguely familiar feel to it.

"Get back," she warned the girls, and tensed as she saw the very air before her start to shimmer, and then roil as if it had solidified, and was not starting to boil.

"What is it," one of the girls cried, jumping back as the cool, ocean air that kept the island moderate actually began to noticeably heat now.

"I don't know," Diana said, eyeing the heart of the disturbance. "But I doubt it's good."

**S**

"You want me to…..infuse my energies with this….spear when you find it, and help you open a quantum portal?"

"Yes," Circe told the silver-coated hero who was born of raw, cosmic energies that had recreated him in an experiment that had gone wrong.

"She may be able to reach Superman and Wonder Woman, Captain," Batman told him grimly.

"Her," the stern, somber hero asked with a skeptical glance. He had never fought her, but the League archives had chronicled those who had. He had studied those archives himself, feeling a soldier should always be aware of his potential enemies.

"Diana's gods are involved," Batman informed him. "And this may be our only chance of even reaching them. Of letting them know we are still looking for them."

Nathanial looked grim, but finally nodded. "All right. But where do we find this…..spear?"

Circe looked at Batman.

He glanced at her, then at Captain Atom, and said, "Queen Hippolyta has it."

"Clever mortal. How did you figure it out?"

"I pay attention to details," he told her, grim as ever as he ignored the previous evening they had shared. "Queen Hippolyta was the first Wonder Woman who was secretly active during the second World War. She took it from Hitler's generals when they dug it up in Scotland while they were trying to gather certain mystical artifacts for their Reich."

"You are good," Circe murmured. "So, all we have to do is go to Themyscira, get the spear, and then….."

"The problem with that is that you are forbidden from trespassing on Paradise Island," Batman reminded her.

"Well, yes. But you aren't," he was told by the witch with a sly smile.

"So, we also have to sway Diana's mother to give up the spear," Nathan asked.

Batman recalled past encounters with the proud leader of the Amazons. "That….is the truly problematic part of this plan."

"Uh-huh," the silver hero murmured cynically.

**S**

Anna sank into her overstuffed couch in a dusty apartment she had not seen in days as she considered her workload.

Who knew that liaison to the most powerful man and woman on the planet could be so much work. Even her work at the agency had not kept her this busy. Being ambassador to New Themyscira had not been half so taxing at first as it was now. At first, reassuring the heroes, and the nations of the world that both sides wanted a peaceful coexistence was simplicity itself. Even if more than a few 'boys' still wanted to get into a pissing contest over the technological secrets being hidden behind archaic architecture on an island shielded by a force shield nothing currently available to modern man could penetrate.

Even then, she calmed most of the fear-mongers, and kept things from getting out of control by reminding most people how the pair had helped save their world not long ago. It helped that both Clark and Diana continued to pull off amazing rescues, performing heroic interventions, and the like on a near daily basis.

Only things got more complicated soon after the heroes had their 'headquarters' finished.

Diana approached her about aiding her in vetting a select number of young people to join them on the island. They wanted to share with Man's World, as she called it, but did not wish to be overwhelmed by greedy, or unprincipled men. She and Clark would teach what they had to offer to the young people Anna helped select, and then they would be returned to their countries to share what they learned with others. Ensuring that everyone saw they were not hiding anything, but were part of their world.

It was an idealistic dream. An honorable one. The sort of thing 'Wonder Woman' would have managed back home without anyone batting an eye.

It took her months of arguing with Congress, the U.N., and every nut and fringe group in the country to pull off the special permissions to even allow anyone to consider applying for the placements the otherworldly heroes offered. China was one of the few to outright refuse to allow any of their people to participate. They were still insisting the 'abducted' scientists be returned.

The new president helped ease Congress' fears, and when America soon culled seven of the twenty slots, other nations forgot the fears and arguments, and sent out candidates by the hundreds. It took her almost another full month to weed out plants, spies, and worse to find four genuine candidates from England, and even Africa and India. Another three weeks passed before three more were added from Europe.

Diana, impatient over the delay, chose to take the fourteen candidates, and wait for the next 'session' to try choosing the next score of aspirants.

That choice did not lighten her load.

She still had her diplomatic duties, and they were increasing after Clark subtly suggested someone was blatantly creating disasters to try to either simply assess their strengths, or possible stop them. He was less than pleased, pointing out the fact that if they weren't in the area of one of these 'traps' when they were triggered, someone could be seriously hurt in a needless disaster.

Anna knew what he was thinking. He was assured it wasn't the government. Still, a lot of nuts were still out there. One in particular stuck in her mind.

Thomas Billings had taken his discharge with less than graceful aplomb. He had been all over the airwaves, lambasting the ultimate illegal alien, and extolling the virtues of true American patriots who did not need outsiders _flying_ to their rescue at any given time. He even suggested the 'heroics' were just a less than altruistic ploy to get a booted foot in the door of the American government to somehow take over….something.

Thomas was usually less than comprehensible by the time he reached that point in his rant. He had vanished a few weeks ago after accusing her of betraying the nation by serving the 'invaders,' and she, frankly, did not miss him.

Still, she now also had the burden of constantly reassuring parents who were having second thoughts after hearing absurd radio shock jockeys talking about cults, indoctrinations, and even…. God help them, alien breeding experiments.

She sighed, staring at the TV, and wondered if she should bother turning it on.

She had already had a long day on the Hill, and things were not likely to be any better listening to the tripe being endlessly echoed in the media.

Reaching for her remote, she switched on her stereo. The first three beats of Beethoven's Ninth sounded in her ears before a faint squealing sound, followed by a pop, and then her whole world turned red as her apartment exploded violently around her.

**S**

"Don't. Touch. Anything," Batman said as he prepared to teleport from the Watchtower to Themyscira after he had called the queen with a request for an audience.

It was only his past experience with her, and his unwavering role in protecting the Amazon's secrets as he fought alongside Diana that gave him that luxury. That he hinted he had more new for her regarding the missing Amazon only helped sway the woman.

"I'll keep an eye on her," Captain Atom assured him. "Just don't be long."

"I'll try. Just keep her out of trouble. And, you. Remember why you are here."

"You weren't so stiff last night," Circe pouted as he turned, his cape swirling around his shoulders as he glared back at her. "You know what I mean," she cooed.

He nodded curtly as J'onn, who did not even pretend to smile as he activated the teleporter.

"Would you like a chair," the Martian asked, gesturing to a chair well away from any critical systems.

"What I would like," Circe smiled. "Is something cold, and wet. Do you perhaps have refreshments on this technological marvel you managed to park over the planet?"

"The cafeteria is on the third level," J'onn nodded. "Captain? Perhaps you would like to….."

"Of course," the somber hero nodded. "This way," he told her as the woman back in a flowing robe and sandals smiled at him.

"You know, Nathan," she asked as they turned toward the lift. "I've been meaning to ask. Since you are, in essence, all energy. How do you…..express your urges now," she asked in a purring voice.

J'onn didn't miss the slight glaring of energy around Nathan's eyes as he glanced at her, and then reached for the elevator control panel to close the doors.

He was almost tempted to eavesdrop on that conversation, but he was not that sort of sentient. Besides, even he could tell when the good Captain was angry. And that one had almost pushed his proverbial buttons but good, he could tell without telepathy.

Batman had best hurry, he silently remarked.

**S**

Clark stood outside the burning apartment building now contained by three rooftop water towers, and a few controlled bursts of super-breath. Along with the firemen's bravery and efforts, he did not dismiss. Fifty-seven people had been rescued after the explosion in the apartment building had almost taken the entire top floor off the structure, and if remained, looking grimly on at the aftermath, it was because he knew who lived in that penthouse apartment atop this building.

"Has anyone reached her," he asked the police officer who walked toward him. He was the one that agreed to call and find out if Anna were at work, or…..

"Her office said she left over an hour ago."

Clark nodded, and looked up. "If you don't mind then, I'm going to have a closer look," he said, rising into the air.

Even as he did, another explosion of flame rose from the middle of the sagging apartment complex, but even as it did, it kept rising. Higher and higher, and arching out over the city.

"Great Krypton," he exclaimed, his eyes making out the humanoid shape in that ball of flaming energy.

The police officer gaped as he was almost blown off his feet by the sudden vacuum from his fantastic acceleration as he gave chase.

Clark heard the screaming even before he neared the flaming body, and he understood. Speeding up just a little more, he paced the flaming figure, and it took little to guess who was there, wreathed in flames, but apparently…..unharmed.

"Ms. Graves," he shouted as the flaming visage turned his way, mouth opened in that endless shriek of fear. "_Anna_! Calm down!"

"Calm….. No! I'm on fire…! _I'm on fire_! Why aren't I….. Wait, are you….? Am I….flying," she sputtered, blazing eyes wide with shock.

"Calm down," he told her again, keeping her focused again as her own speed began to falter well out over the ocean now. "Look at me. Listen to me. Somehow…."

"What? What happened? I only remember… My apartment….exploded….."

"You obviously have a meta-gene," he told her somberly as she now hovered there in the sky before him, staring at her hands, which were as fiery as the rest of her.

"But…. But….. That was only on…..your world? Wasn't it? Wasn't it," she asked, the flames starting to sputter now.

He reached out and caught her even as the last flames died out, and she realized belated that she was completely naked.

"Ohmigod," she rasped, and turned red the old-fashioned way as he wrapped his cape around her. "Ohmigod," she echoed, feeling him wrap strong arms around her, pulling him to his side.

"You're all right now," he told her. "But I think someone tried to kill you. All the witnesses claim they heard a bomb go off."

"They did. In my apartment. Clark," she told him, looking up at him as he angled and resumed his flight to head out over the Atlantic, obviously headed for New Themyscira. "I think it was Billings. I think he planted a bomb in my place."

"We'll contact the authorities when we get to my place. We need to check you out, though, and ensure you have a handle on your…..powers."

"But….this is the _real_ world!"

"Yes, it is. Isn't it," he remarked calmly, though he was more than thoughtful himself.

"You know what I mean," she huffed. "People aren't supposed to….. To…"

"Yes," he asked, giving her a wry smile as she looked down at the ocean far below them.

"Ohmigod. I was really…..on fire?"

"Whatever happened, we'll figure it out, and help you manage it."

"But….how?"

"You do realize I helped Batman and Diana start the Justice League. We've both worked with a lot of young heroes, and more than a few inexperienced metas along the way. Powers aside, we don't need to give your attacker another easy target."

"Billings. I just know it was that sanctimonious…"

"I won't doubt you. We've all heard his vitriol. Still, I doubt he's the type to get his hands dirty if he is behind this, or the accidents we've been having. Better to keep you out of sight for now than give whoever is behind all this another target."

"I'm not a damsel in distress," she growled, and Clark noted the sudden bright flash in her eyes. "I was a damn good agent in the FBI long before I ever went to work for Colonel Carter. And even then….."

She burst into flame even as her hands clenched, and Clark let her go even though he was obviously in no danger of being seared. She gasped, surprised at finding herself aflame, and airborne again.

"I believe we can definitely confirm your emotions are tied to your powers. Can you fly? Consciously direct your flight now?"

"I….don't know," she frowned, though that expression was lost behind her once again flaming visage.

"Go. I'll be right behind you. We might as well find out how much control you have. If you feel yourself faltering," Clark teased. "If it helps, just think of Billings."

He heard a faint growl as her teeth audibly ground, and even he was surprised at how brightly she flared, and how fast she suddenly flew away from him.

"Definitely an emotional connection to the power," he murmured, following her as he stayed just beside her as she proved to be getting an instinctive grip on her own ability as she started to soar higher, diving, then climbing again, and then he heard the echoing howl of glee as she streaked higher, and arched up, and over the ocean with a fresh burst of speed.

"Almost like Volcana," he murmured, and followed her toward New Themyscira.

_To Be Continued…_


	8. Chapter 8

_I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy._

_**SUPER **_

**By LJ58**

**Part 8:**

Diana stood ready for anything as the air roiled before her, and the girls with her stood back.

For a moment it seemed she could almost make out a body on the other side of what appeared to be a portal, then the shimmering haze vanished with a dull popping sound, and everything looked normal.

Just before a streak of flame blazed down across the island, and she looked up to see Superman landing nearby with a woman on fire. Not just any woman.

"Calm down now," Superman was telling her as Diana's keen gaze made out familiar features in spite of the bright flames. "Deep breaths, and calm down. Focus on me. Just like before," he was saying as the woman, smiling hugely, let him settle his cape around her shoulders as Diana realized the woman was completely naked.

"Ms. Graves? Clark, what happened?"

"I suspect you already know, Diana. If those scientists back on our Earth were right, I suspect being in my presence helped jumpstart Ms. Graves' meta-gene."

"That is so cool," one of the girls exclaimed as they came over now, seeing any apparent danger was past.

"Not completely," Anna told them. "I only learned after the fact."

"After….?"

"After someone bombed her apartment," Clark told Diana grimly. "She thinks it might have been General Billings."

"He was…..more than a little testy. He reminds me a little of General Eiling back home."

"I don't know who that is, but he would have to be pretty bad to match Thomas Billings," Anna said.

"All that can wait," Clark told them. "Diana, we need to take Anna to the medical lab, and ensure her powers haven't had an adverse affect on her. We also need to get an idea just what is going on here. She exhibited some similar traits to Volcana, but I can't be sure, because her powers do seem to surge with her emotional state."

"I remember her. All right. I'm sure you'd also like something to wear," Diana said, smiling at Anna.

"While you take care of that, I'm going to contact the D.C. authorities and let them know Ms. Graves is safe. And mention her….suspicions."

"That might not be a bad idea."

"Does this mean Ethics is canceled," one of the five with them asked.

"No chance. Dr. Li is giving that one."

"Which one," the older woman asked.

"Alicia Li," the younger girl remarked. "She's pretty good. Dr. Chang tends to get distracted by theory. She's more….practical."

Diana smiled at that, then led them all toward the temple.

"Oh, hey, what about that weird glowy thing that showed up," the younger girl also blurted as she looked around.

"What weird glowy thing," Clark asked just when he was about to turn to go his own way.

**S**

Circe emerged on the beach even as Diana shoved her crude raft into the water.

She frowned.

One moment she had been inches from the Amazon who stood before her in full armor, and now she was watching her on the far side of the island, all but naked, shoving a makeshift raft into the glassy seas.

Holding up the still glowing bolt, she focused on it, then slapped it to her robe's belt, and focused on the mystical device as it shrank down, and become a small sigil on the newly fashioned plate of her belt. The lightning design of the sigil was less than coincidental.

"Show-off," she muttered, knowing which of the gods had influenced the shape.

There was, predictably, no answer.

They never answered when you wanted them to speak. They weren't exactly 'people deities.' More uptight, surprisingly prudish little tyrants that had their own ideas how to oversee the physical realm. Gods help you did you step over their lines, though. Prometheus was likely still suffering for his daring. And last she had heard, Hera was still making Heracles' afterlife a genuine Hades. She was pretty sure the woman's allowing his deification had been no favor. Not knowing that frigid…..

She glanced around, the eerie sensation of being watched filling her mystic senses as she sighed, and shook off her apprehension.

"Fine, fine. But I can't too well act until I reach the moment you chose. And I'm obviously not there yet, am I. Something threw me off."

No reason not to have a bit of fun, though, she decided, taking the shape of a bird as she flew up and overheard as she paced Diana's raft.

She paced the raft for days until a storm came up, and then she chose to dive into the ocean, altering her shape yet again as she continued to shadow the Amazon who was obviously struggling to survive. It occurred to her that never had her nemesis been so weak. So helpless. Now would likely be the only time she would ever have a chance to truly finish the troublesome Amazon.

Yet she also had a calling. One she couldn't ignore. Not considering who had summoned her, and how she had gotten here. For all she knew, she could not return without the Amazon's aid. Taking the shape of a large, sleek shark, she easily followed the raft now being tossed about above her. When the waves grew too high, she considered going deeper, but it occurred to her that the Amazon might actually need help herself.

She rose up under the raft, noting the debris being washed over the side, but the woman atop it seemed to be clinging to the surface with a strength born more of desperation than the gods. Had the princess truly lost her powers?

Morning came again, and she was airborne again.

Finally, she saw a ship from man's world, and watched the men drag the nearly spent Amazon aboard. Reducing herself to the size of a flea, she followed and watched as she realized the men thought her mad. It took the wisdom of seconds to realize there were no costumed heroes in this world. No League of allies waiting to assist her. Yet, where was the alien hero Batman thought was here, too?

She wasn't sure, but for now, watching, and waiting were quite amusing.

She might not be able to strike at her longtime foe, but she could gain a lifetime's worth of amusement as she played invisible spectator to the indignities visited upon the hapless woman she had fought time and again with no clear victory.

And it was amusing, until the day the princess chose to break and run, and almost got herself killed.

She compelled the woman to turn at the last minute just before one of those treacherous men shot her in the back. What manner of men were these that would shot an unarmed woman so? Still, even she was astonished, and impressed as the nearly powerless Amazon still managed to charge through her attackers, deflect the gunfire aimed her way, and still made it to the beach of the island.

She just didn't have a chance to escape the newcomers.

She watched the woman be struck down, still alive, and dragged to a prison where the uniforms were different, but the tactics remained much the same as any captor she had ever known.

It occurred to her that Diana might actually be in trouble as she noted the doctors taking samples of her blood, hair, and tissue, and even calling certain personages who replied in cryptic codes she didn't understand.

She did understand what was coming, though, and moved to find the Amazon aid before she did end up dying on this world. She wasn't ready to approach her. Something told her it was not the time. Not the place. Still, Diana was still in genuine danger. She was possibly facing a very real death here.

Something that could not happen. Apparently, did not happen, since she now perceived that other Amazon she had seen was sometime in the future. Not to far, she didn't think, but far enough that something had happened. Something monumental.

She sensed it.

When she went to mainland, seeking a counterpart to Bruce, or his companions, she found the alien hero already working in his usual fashion. She didn't dare just approach him, though. Not just yet. Not without Diana.

She watched him. Followed him now as an invisible observer, and found her pawn. The woman with the federal agent was the sort that would react to injustice. She could sense it in her. She was easily led to the damning report by several of her superiors, and it took no real prodding to get her to reveal it to her own partner.

Who predictably carried it directly to the Amazon even as she discerned a growing plot. Still, she was astonished at how close she still came to losing the woman she was apparently there to aid in some fashion even she did not yet understand. She watched as the admittedly glorious specimen of masculine power carried off the Amazon, and then followed once more in his wake.

She watched invisibly as they made their plans, then left for the island. The very place she needed to be in due time. Thus, she followed, for it was obvious that whatever was going to happen had left the place impenetrable to even her magics. First, however, she had gone to play a little prank of her own once she deciphered what some of the men were trying to do. She replaced all that stolen blood and tissue with sand. Ordinary sand. Let them make something of that. Afterward, she ensured she returned to the island before she was again prevented. Something had plainly repelled her when she had tried to exit that portal. Which meant they were going to do something that she could not afford to be on the outside of this time.

She found a cavern once they arrived, and quickly made a discreet home of it, shielding it with her magic, and altering it to her tastes as she waited.

Then the very world was rocked as she realized the titans, the very titans Zeus had once imprisoned eons past, were trying to reemerge in this world. She gasped in genuine dread as they tore the very sky asunder, and still the heroes' attackers paid no heed to their own danger, but tried to take Diana back.

Then the blue and red clad hero actually drove those monsters of yore back into the depths of their prison, and then frightened away Diana's attackers. Diana, who despite her much reduced powers, still held back those men as if fighting green recruits. Still, they were hardly Spartans.

Yet there was a taste in the air. Something that seemed…..familiar.

She watched as she pushed the notion aside, noting the relieved group watching as their enemies fled their wrath in the end. Even she could understand that kind of fear. A man that could drive back titans was a man that you did not trifle with.

Going back to her cave, she watched in impatient solitude as she felt time compressing around her. She watched the temple begin to rise. Watched Diana pray, and saw her restored. Once again the peerless warrior of Themyscira, she would now be a match for virtually anyone that faced her. Then she saw the rise of the hybrid machines that the alien built with exact care and precise calculations that belied the claims on their world that he was nothing but flying brawn.

His machines generated a barrier that now held her on the island, even as it once held her out. Only it was still not time.

Soon. Very soon. But it was not time. Yet.

**S**

"It doesn't look like much," Thomas Billings complained as he eyed the massive electro-magnetic plate surrounded by five steel ribs curving up and around the base with emitters on the end of the downwardly curved fins.

"It's not the looks," Jacob told him. The geneticist was overseeing the placement of the last emitter on the tip of the fifth fin, and was hoping that the light show would be enough to convince the man he had his 'weapon.' Meanwhile, he could still bluff as to its potential effectiveness as there was no way he was going to get an AI capable of running the complicated program he and his allies in this scientific shell game had devised.

The disgraced general walked around the device they had created, and then returned to Jacob McKinley's side.

"It is ready, then?"

"Except for the computer core," Jacob nodded, his team looking around uneasily.

"Good. It should be here in a few days."

"It…..should," Jacob asked more than a bit surprised by that statement.

"Of course. I may have been forced out of my position by those treacherous, short-sighted fools in power, but I still have my own connections. Loyal connections. Be ready to install, and activate the device when it arrives," he said, then looked to one of his men.

Jacob shared a genuine look of anxiety as the guards now began shepherding them back to the lift that returned to the underground installation.

"And when do you we get to leave," Jean demanded, his outrage making him bold as the man hesitated to enter the lift with the others. "I'm a geologist. Not a geneticist, or a computer tech. I've nothing to do with the rest of this."

"So you don't," Thomas smiled, pulled his pistol, and shot him.

"Anyone else want to quit now," he asked.

No one said a word as two of the guards dragged off the body.

Jacob realized now what he should have already known. Not only was Billings completely and certifiably insane. He had no intention of letting any of them go. He could see that now.

"We're all going to die, Abby whimpered as the lift carried them back down into the bowels of the compound deep below the earth.

He couldn't tell her otherwise. Not just then.

"He still needs us to program the computer," one of the other scientist said quietly. Jacob glanced over at Adam Eastman, a genuine technological genius drafted for his computer knowledge, and saw the speculative gleam in his eyes.

"True," Jacob agreed.

Adam gave him an imperceptible nod. Apparently, Jacob realized, the man had a plan of his own.

He prayed it was better than his own. His had just fizzled out, drowned in that poor Frenchman's blood.

**S**

"What is it," Anna asked, sitting up after the machine's swinging bar that contained some kind of LED lights passed over her, blinding her with a vaguely pinkish-white light. "What is happening?"

Diana was eyeing the console where she was studying the results of the medical scanner, and frowning.

"This….doesn't make sense," she frowned.

"What? What is it? Am I…..still human," she asked, now wearing a one-piece toga like the girls wore between classes when not dressed for other activities.

"I assure you, Ms. Graves," Diana told her. "You are still very human. Incredibly enough, this indicates that Clark was right. You do have an active meta-gene."

"But…..?"

"Only it's not what I expected."

"What do you mean?"

"This," she pointed out. "I've seen this energy signature before now. And it shouldn't be here. Not in this world."

"What do you mean," Anna echoed, rising to her feet, and walking up behind her.

Diana turned to study her. "Most meta-genes are a result of a physical trauma triggering a latent mutation already present within the basic genetic structure."

"Well, I'd say a bomb going off in my face counts."

"Maybe," Diana told her. "But the bio-energy signature here isn't organic. It's…..magical. Pure magic. And that should be impossible on this world. In this dimension. When I first arrived, there wasn't a trace of magic anywhere. That lack almost killed me. Yet now, here you are literally radiating magic. Magic so strong that even Dr. Fate would be hard-pressed to match you."

"Dr….Fate. Okay, if I remember the stories I've been...studying, that's the guy with the magic helmet. Right?"

Diana sighed. "Yes."

"So, this flame thing of mine is….magic?"

"I believe it is. We need to test your skill, and ascertain your degree of control, but….I believe you are channeling pure magic. Not just physical pyrokinesis as we first thought."

"Pyro….? Fire? Right?"

"Literally, mentally summoned and controlled fire. We fought a foe with that power, and it was….quite formidable. I suspect yours might prove even moreso considering its apparently arcane source. I just cannot fathom how you manifested raw magics on this, a hitherto non-magical world."

"Don't look at me."

"I'll need to speak with Clark on this. Meanwhile, I'd like you to go to the field beyond the temple, and practice simply summoning and dismissing your flame. Only contain it just to your hands, if you can. If you can hone that kind of control, then theoretically, you should be able to hone your control over every aspect of your…..new gifts."

"All right. But I'm telling you now, there is no way I'm going to put on spandex, and start punching people. That's not my thing."

"Yet you were an agent of your government?"

"That's right. A federal agent. A law officer. Not a…"

"Vigilante?"

"No offense," Anna frowned as she slid into the sandals left for her. "But I prefer to operate inside the system."

"None taken, sister," Diana told her. "But consider. We both have enemies that would like to see us all dead. Or imprisoned. You now have the ability to better resist them. If you can control yourself. Otherwise, you might prove yourself a danger even to your own allies at home if you don't find and manage that control over the powers that are now yours."

"Point taken," Anna grumbled. "I'll be outside."

Diana nodded. "Don't worry. We will help you. You are among friends here. I hope you know that."

"Well, at least my new room isn't likely to explode," having been given a room in the 'temple' for the time being.

"Not unless you do it yourself," Diana couldn't help teasing as she watched the brunette head for the door.

Anna froze, looking back over her shoulder in astonishment.

"That is not even close to being funny."

Diana only smiled.

"Go and practice."

Anna grumbled, but left to do as she said.

Diana was still going over the finding again, looking for explanations when Clark, sans his cape, walked into the medical chamber.

"Did you hear…..?"

"I heard you both," he nodded. "I also filled in Agent Carter. Hopefully he can use what Ms. Graves suspects, and any physical evidence they might find to help lead us to whoever is behind all this madness."

"Magic, Clark. _Here_. Something is going on, because it wasn't here before. I know. I would have sensed it."

"So, magic, and meta-genes?"

"Yes, I anticipated a biological variant of some kind, and I found it. But the energy patterns were not organic. They were pure magic."

"I won't ask if you're sure," he murmured, and both of them knew what made him nervous. Magic was one of his few weaknesses. Even on their world it was just rare enough to find a competent user that he only had to face that threat on a rare occasion.

"Wise of you," she murmured all the same. "I've considered the source. While it's theoretical possible that you might have been responsible for jumpstarting human metagenes here, as some have suggested, I don't think you are a source of magical abilities."

"Hardly," he agreed.

"I suppose it's possible that the rift the Old Ones tore in the sky might have…..leaked some of their arcane essence into this world."

"Enough to account for something like this?"

"I…..don't know. It's all I can think of just now."

"What of that disturbance you noted earlier?"

"I don't know. It could have been magical. It's possible that your energy barrier prevented whatever it was from fully forming. Still, nothing actually appeared. Which leaves me puzzled, because, Clark, the only other explanation is that someone purposely came to this world, and somehow opened a fount of mystic energies previously unavailable to this realm."

"You're almost there, Princess," a voice drawled. "See, I knew that you could be clever when you tried."

Both of them turned to see the regal brunette in silvery-white robes staring at them from the corner of the room.

"_Circe_," Diana hissed, and raised both fists.

"Pardon the intrusion, but this is official business. Believe it, or not, I'm here on behalf of the gods to help you two."

"You expect us to believe that," Diana demanded, not lowering her guard.

"You'd better. Because you're very close to the truth, Diana," the witch told her. "_Ares_ is here. I finally scented his bitter stench when I settled down, and began to recognize his hand in the recent events around us."

"Ares," Diana frowned. "Here?"

"Yes, and he's apparently violated the pact Zeus set down regarding this world, and intruded into this realm that was to be left untouched by gods, or the rule of magic. He's already trying to influence and shape men here to his liking, and trying to arrange a world war. A true genocide."

"Why," Clark gasped.

"Why else," Circe sighed as she rolled her eyes. "He is the god of war. Likely he has his own silly hidden plans, but so far as I know, they all start with the destruction of this world."

"That is why we were sent. To stop him," Diana realized.

"But then why did they not just…..?"

"Kal-El," the witch called him, ignoring the fact she had overhead him called by a name she should not know. "Since when did the gods ever make things simple for mortals? Or their champions," she asked tellingly.

"So, they sent you here, too? Why?"

Circe stepped forward, smiling as she slid a hand over the glittering buckle on her robe's belt. A moment later, and a long, jagged spear was held before her in both hands.

"Zeus said you two would need this."

Diana's eyes rounded. "Great Hera! Is this….?"

"Just what you think it is."

What do we do with it," Clark asked, frowning as Diana reverently took hold of the cold steel that thrummed with secret power.

"What else? You are going to hold an arcane ritual, and summons the gods of Olympus to this world. Only then can they infuse you, and their champions, with the might to face Ares' forces."

"The gods…..are coming here?"

"That's the plan," Circe nodded. "But we don't have much time. You can bet you know who is going to be sensing what you're up to the moment you start to act. We have to be ready for him. Or he could stop the ritual, deny the gods' their physical manifestation in this realm, and leave you helpless to completely thwart his plans."

Diana looked at Clark. "I believe her," she told him.

"But you yourself told me….."

"Kal," she called him now, glancing back at the witch. "Whatever is going on, the only way Circe could have gotten Zeus' thunderbolt is from my mother. Trust me. She would not have just casually handed it over." Diana looked at her again. "I believe her."

"Very well," Clark nodded at them both. "How do we start?"

_To Be Continued…._


	9. Chapter 9

_I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy._

_**SUPER **_

**By LJ58**

**Part 9:**

Circe watched Clark fly off, and had to admit he was a sight to behold.

"So, have you…..?"

"Keep your mind on the task before us, witch," Diana snapped as she prepared her jet. "Remember, we are counting on you to defend this island if someone comes here thinking to exploit our absence."

"While I would ordinarily leave you to your sad crusade, Wonder Woman," Circe smiled. "You will find that I am, as ever, a champion of what is in my own best interests. As curious as it seems, that currently means championing you, and your cause."

"Right," Diana nodded, eyeing her as she put the now restored bolt-shaped spear into the cockpit of her jet. "Just remember, I'm trusting you with those children. That means I'm also going to hold you responsible for them."

"I'm quivering in my…..sandals," Circe smiled as Diana settled into the jet, and sealed the cockpit. "Just keep an eye on things. And don't transform anyone," she spat as the turbines began to whine as she ignited the engine.

"Nag, nag, nag," she muttered, then smiled, and eyed Diana thoughtfully. "Perhaps another time," she told herself with a wistful sigh. Then walked away as the jet climbed into the sky, and sped off toward its destination.

**S**

Ellie stared as Anna Graves juggled flames with her bare hands, and Circe applauded as all fourteen of her new 'charges' stood watching the older woman working with her new power.

"Can….anyone do that," the sixteen year old asked in awe as Anna launched a ball of flame, then struck out at it with another burst of burning energy that shattered the first into fluttering tongues of energy that soon sputtered and faded out over their heads.

"I'm tempted to say that if she can, anyone can," Circe smiled sardonically as she eyed the woman who glared at her. "But you do need a natural affinity for magic."

She had little doubt the former agent, and current ambassador to this sad reflection of the true Themyscira had been well briefed before Diana had departed on her current mission to raise the gods. Which, naturally, meant the little mortal was going to be suspicious and watchful, which took a lot of fun out of her current situation.

Still, she was impressed with the potent energies the woman instinctively juggled as she learned to adapt to her new reality.

"Why don't you tell her the cost," Anna glowered, then looked at the girl after glancing around the half circle of spectators. "You girls know anything about the meta-gene from Clark's world?"

"It's what makes you get powers," fourteen year old Robinski declared, the chubby girl as excited as any of them at seeing a 'normal' person with real superpowers.

"Close. Apparently, I have one. It only took having a bomb going off in my face to jumpstart it. I barely survived it."

"Bummer," twenty year old Rina Waters exclaimed. "I don't want to be blown up."

"It wasn't much fun," Anna agreed.

"How would you like a real lesson, my dear," Circe asked her.

Anna glanced at her, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Circe only smiled, deciding that Diana had definitely forewarned the woman.

"Listen, I know Diana likely told you we have…..history."

"To say the least," Anna shot back.

"Granted. But as I told her, mortal, I am charged with aiding her, and the hero in this quest. That, and they are my best chance of getting home again myself."

"So…. Without them, you're stuck, too?"

"Unless the gods make it here, and offer a way back. For which, I readily admit, I am not….holding my breath, as you people like to say."

"Fair enough. Listen, you are doing surprisingly well at handling your new abilities, but I can give you a few simple lessons that will make it even easier for you. I am, after all, someone of an adept at handling magics," she reminded her.

"So I've heard. And read. Even here we have stories of Circe, and her island of sailors she turned into….."

"A lark. Frankly, that's ancient history," Circe smiled, waving a hand in dismissal.

"You can actually turn people into animals," Paula asked incredulously. "For real?"

"Like a demonstration," she cooed at the eighteen year old.

"No," Anna snapped, stepping between them.

Paula looked vaguely disappointed.

"Fine. Fine. The offer is genuine, though. I can give you a few tips, and it should make it even easier for you to manipulate your power without wasting so much energy."

"All right. I'll be the first to admit I'm in over my head here," Anna sighed, and nodded her way. "What do you suggest?"

"Just a few tips. First, when you channel, breathe deep, calm yourself. Don't let your emotions go so…..freely. I know that some magic is emotive in nature, but that doesn't mean you have to loose your temper. That only prompts waste, and carelessness. Careless magic is wild magic. The kind that can hurt you. Oh, and other people."

Anna nodded.

"Second. Try this. Stand up a little straighter. Now, hold out your hands, palms up, like so," she demonstrated.

Anna complied, then looked back at her as the girls watched, surrounding them.

"Now, magic, my little firebug, is limited only by your imagination. I suspect you instinctively latched onto the first source of energy around you, and so branded your own imagination with the flames you now manifest. Magic itself, however, is unlimited. Think of your power. Feel it. Draw it up, and let it pool right in your palms. Calmly, now," she added, and watched as Anna started to flush, and tremble. "Remember, your passions may be fuel, but they can be channeled and controlled just as your energies you now embody."

A moment later the flames burst outward from her palms, but then settled down, turning blue as they did until small fluttering spheres of blue energy now burned in both palms.

"Now, you have the heart of magic," Circe told her, her own hands lit with incandescent orbs that pulsed and hovered just over her own palms. "Ready for the next lesson?"

Anna stared, amazed at the fiery flames she had been exuding had been so distilled as she stared at the roughly spheroid cerulean flame she now held out in both hands.

"Watch carefully," she told her, "And remember, all you need is imagination," she grinned, and pressed both hands together, forming a single sphere that she then flung out from her. "Focus, and imagination."

Paula gasped, and dropped to all fours as a large, sleek panther as golden as the blonde's silvery-white mane now stood before them.

Anna's spheres sputtered and died as she turned to gape with the rest, several girls shrinking back as the panther snarled, then padded over to Circe's side, and let the witch scratch her head.

"Change….her….back," Anna hissed.

"You do it," Circe told her.

"What! I'm no….!"

"Yes. You are. _Sorceress_. Your power might be….unrefined. Still, you have it in you to do far more than throw a few fireballs, or flit about like a bird. Much more. Remember? Imagination is your only limit. So," Circe smiled, and gestured to the panther now sitting at her side. "Change her back. Just remember. Calm, channel, focus, and imagine. Whatever you imagine, that you can do. Trust me on this."

Anna stared at the golden panther, and frowned as the other girls looked on in shock, and some envy.

"What if I…..hurt her?"

"Don't worry. What kind of teacher would I be if I let my protégé damage her toys?"

"She is not a toy….!"

"A figure of speech. Honestly, you mortals are all so touchy about trivial matters. Now, calm yourself. Focus. And show me your power, little sorceress," Circe smiled at her.

Anna scowled, clenched her fists, then looked at the panther that had been one of the girls she had sent here. A girl who was as much her responsibility as Clark and Diana's.

"I'm just glad Laura isn't here to see this," she grimaced, knowing the old woman still favored the house Clark first built for her and the Lis when they first settled on the island.

"She's waiting," Circe smiled, glancing down at Paula.

Anna grimaced. Drew a deep breath, and closed her eyes as she held out her hands again. This time, the flames took less time to fade to blue, and were more spherical than before. Yet, still, it was much like a small tongue of flame. She eyed the panther that sat watching her with a very un-feral gaze, and drew another deep breath.

Focus, she chided herself, and imagined the girl rather than the animal standing there.

Slamming her palms together, the blue balls flared, turning iridescent just before she flung out her hands and aimed it at the waiting beast.

For a moment there was only a shimmering haze around the transformed girl, and then she began to stretch up, and grow taller, and then a nearly five-ten bipedal panther stood beside Circe on hybrid paws as she looked at Anna with a curious gaze as she held up her forearms which now had human hands once more.

She was, however, still quite feline.

"Not bad for a first effort, my dear," Circe grinned.

"But she isn't…..!"

"Calm down. You actually did far better than I expected," Circe assured her. She virtually just waved a single hand, and Paula was back to normal, right down to her sweats, and grinning ear-to-ear.

"That was so cool," the girl exclaimed as the others all but mobbed her, asking how she felt. If she knew what had happened, and what she had been thinking.

"All right. You know as much as I can teach you now," Circe assured Anna as she smiled at the girls who were sharing their excitement. "Now, it's all a matter of practice. If you don't want to use living toys for now, try other things. Rocks. Trees. That sort of thing. But, my dear, I think you already show a great deal of promise. Trust me. I know."

Anna said nothing to that as she stared at her hands, and wriggled her fingers.

Ordinary hands. Ordinary fingers. And yet…..

"Feeling it yet," Circe asked knowingly. "Well, I'll leave you to it. After all, I'm not a babysitter," she chortled, and walked away, vanishing into thin air before she made four steps.

"Me next," a girl asked Anna.

"No, me!"

"I want to try!"

Anna groaned.

**S**

Thomas eyed the machine as Jacob stepped back, watching as Adam continued to type on the keyboard attached to the new AI 'borrowed' via a few clandestine contacts who had just gotten in from Germany.

"Well," the impatient Billings demanded as he watched the small monitor scroll data so fast that it seemed that all that showed was vague wriggly lines rolling down the screen in an endless parade.

"I'm running a system's check now, sir," Adam told him, typing furiously as he put his own plan into affect in a bid for survival. "But the final analysis will require a test. A live test, if we want to be certain the device is working at optimum levels."

"What kind of test?"

"What he means, general," Jacob stepped forward now, holding his own carefully prepped notes. "Is that we use a…..known energy source, tap it, and then infuse the borrowed energy into a new host. A test of the process, as well as the machine."

"How?"

"How? We just told you," Adam replied.

"I mean, how do you expect to test it? Viably, that is," he asked suspiciously.

Which they had predicted as his most likely response.

"Well, we know that certain types of crystals create a natural resonance that, in essence, stores energy. It's why so many New Agers parade around with quartz crystals, and the like. It's why silicon was chosen as the conductor of choice for microchips, and….."

"Just cut to the chase, damn it," the impatient man spat at him.

"What we want to do," Jacob told him. "Is place a sizeable piece of energized crystal into the device. If everything works as we hope, and predict, the device will drain the crystal of its energies, and then we should be able to transplant it into a new host. Our….volunteer."

"Say it works," Thomas asked condescendingly. "What would the results be if the host is….energized?"

"Well, that's it. Augmented energy. Probably they'll feel…..refreshed, more alert. More focused. It would be like a caffeine boost on steroids," Adam smiled. "Body and brain should be heightened to whatever level the available energy allows."

Thomas eyed several of his men.

"You," Thomas surprised them by pointing at Abby.

"Me," the rather mousy, if intelligent woman gasped.

"You're the volunteer. Get ready to fire it up, gentlemen," Thomas Billings smiled slyly. "And it had better work as advertised. For the young lady's sake, if not your own."

Abby stared at them, and swallowed hard.

She knew the plan, of course. She knew that theoretically, she should be safe. All she had to do was go along with the hoax. Whoever had been chosen, they had agreed it would be one of them knowing the ex-officer's paranoia, all they had to do was go along with the light show, ala Tesla, and then feign a new, and restored vigor.

The general gets duped, and they bought more time.

Time in which the real heart of the program Adam had written, and was now installing sent out a cyber-beacon they hoped would alert someone. Anyone. Perhaps even those heroes out there that were supposed to be in the business of saving people. At least, that was the hope. Either way, this wireless beacon broadcast by the faux beryllium sphere was their only hope. Otherwise, Billings was going to bury them all.

"We should use a silicon crystal. The larger the better," Jacob told the madman playing with their lives. "We will have to….."

"I read your notes last night," Thomas smirked smugly, and nodded at his nearest man again. "Your crystal is waiting in the supply shed even now. You just have to plug it in."

"Well…. That will save time," Jacob nodded. "Shall we," he asked Adam who stepped back only then, nodding.

"Ready as we'll ever be. I'm cycling the emitters now. Once the specimen is in place, we can start the main show."

"Do it," Thomas spat at them.

Abby couldn't help backing away from the machine as the humming began to grow in volume, and the tips of the emitters started to spark and glow.

"Don't be trying to leave now," the cold-eyed general told her. "You'd be missing your chance to help advance the cause of science, and American supremacy."

She said nothing to that as the man put a hand over his holstered weapon, and left her with no choice. No choice at all.

**S**

Clark flew high into the air near the north pole, then looked down at the planet below.

Heightened senses tracked everyone and everything he focused on, and still there were countless lives he couldn't follow. Couldn't save. A part of him selfishly hoped that heroes did rise on this world. They could fill in a vacuum that would allow he and Diana to leave without worrying about the lives that might otherwise be lost if Ares, or those like him, rose to threaten this planet again.

Still, it was not his world. Not his home.

He knew Diana was taking the greater chance here. She was visibly carrying the device Circe had given her to the tradition site of Mount Olympus to 'raise' the gods on this planet. In this realm. Ares was bound to notice her carrying out certain ancient rituals. Certain dangerous rites, considering what they meant.

If the portal could be opened long enough, and large enough to allow a passage to Olympus itself on this planet, then Ares' campaign would be drastically altered.

He had already reasoned that one of the three tests the Chinese conducted must have been what allowed that bloodthirsty god to appear here in the first place. Perhaps, as Diana thought, the other gods then moved to arrange things to bring them here to help forestall the war god's efforts, but he liked to think that free will was more than just an expression. He did not like to think that their lives were the playthings of gods, or other arcane deities.

Still, for this to work, Diana had to draw the ancient Olympian to her.

While she did, he had another task.

Opening his belt's hidden compartment, he pulled out the tiny bolt that Circe had stored there. Hidden by her magic, she had reduced and stored the true Spear there while manufacturing a convincing replica with an aura of magic to dupe anyone watching, or paying attention.

"_Size means nothing_," the witch had told him as she had handed him the true Spear. "_This is but a sliver of one of the first and true Thunderbolt, and yet it holds all the power and potential of the original. All you need do is shatter it again, and the passage will open, and the gods will appear_."

"_How_," he had asked.

"_How did you best the Ancient Titans_," she had smirked.

Clark glanced around, his senses detecting nothing at all over the region of the globe he had selected for what could be a very dangerous maneuver.

"_Location means nothing_," Circe had told him, and Diana agreed. "_Space has as little meaning as Time to the immortal gods. Just shatter the Spear, and the gate they demand will open_."

Location means nothing, she had said. Diana was just being obvious to draw the war god. After all, Ares seemed to consistently underestimate mortal heroes. It was his one failing, and one he made time and again. From ancient times, to today.

Clark hoped that remained true as he held out the small bolt not two inches in length, and locked his gaze on it.

Throwing it up into the air before him, he watched it hover for a moment, then trained his heat vision on it at full strength.

For a long, heart-wrenching moment nothing seemed to happen. Until an explosion that very nearly deafened him rumbled across the sky just before it seemed the very Hand of God slapped him from the skies as the storm of storms was unleashed over the Pole as he was flung into the Arctic Sea by forces even he could not resist.

**S**

"Gentlemen. Do not disappoint me," Thomas Billings told them as he watched the 'test,' and ignored the growing storm clouds to the north.

"Uh, shouldn't we be getting under cover," Abby asked as she shrank back as the emitters sparked brightly, and sparks danced around the platform like Tesla's maddest experiment gone awry. The long, arching bolts of electricity skidded over and around the thirty pound raw crystal Billings had arranged, and were it not for the potentially deadly consequences of the deceptive game they played, Abby might have been a bit more enthralls.

She had not, however, expected to be the one to actually be chosen as a test subject.

Thomas glanced toward the darkening skies. "Bah! A bit of bad weather means nothing. If anything, if might add more energy to the device when it empowers you. A rather nice acid test, as it were," he scoffed.

The scientists looked grimly at once another, but said nothing as the machine was powered down, and Adam said, "It's ready for the next phase."

"Just stand in the very center on the insulated plating," Jacob murmured to her as one of the guards gestured curtly with a brusque nod when Abby didn't immediately move. "You should be save enough. Don't worry, the weather is still pretty far…"

"We both know how far lightning can travel," she hissed. "And I'll still be standing on the biggest piece of conductive metal in the area," she added.

"Would you rather be shot," Adam asked quietly.

She grimaced, knowing Billings would shoot her. Would not even hesitate to do so.

She stepped up on the platform, and made her way to the center of the device.

"Just stay perfectly still," Adam advised her as two soldiers carried off the chunk of crystal before she replaced it.

"Just get it over with," she rasped, praying she survived, and that they got their message out.

"Starting the recycling program," Adam announced. "Don't move, Abigail."

She stood pale and trembling, fists clenched at her sides as the sky began to rumble ominously.

"Do it," Thomas almost shouted gleefully, eager to see what came of the experiment. "Do it now!"

Adam pressed the single button, and the emitters charged with life again. Even as the lightshow began, a bolt of lightning struck the very heart of the machine, blinding them as the woman at the heart of the blast of natural energy that approached over fifty-four thousand degrees Fahrenheit. They couldn't even hear the woman scream as the blinding bolt flung them back, the thunderclap deafening them as the machine exploded into deadly shrapnel that took a heavy toll on those too close to the blast.

Adam died almost instantly, along with half the guards watching. Another half were badly injured as the shrapnel flew indiscriminately through the spectators. Most of the surviving scientists had the sense to fling themselves down, seeking cover when they anticipated the danger in that single, brief flash before chaos reigned.

Jacob rolled over onto his back, a hand rising to touch the throbbing gash at his left temple. The only injury he had suffered as he instinctually flung himself down and away even as the bolt of lightning had struck.

The first thing he saw was Adam's charred, mangled body laying near him. He had taken the brunt of the shrapnel, and had liked saved Jacob's life.

"My…..God," he rasped, staring up at the smoldering ruin of the sphere.

"No," someone swore bitterly to one side.

He turned to see Thomas on his knees, his left arm dangling, and blood flowing from several wounds, but the man was otherwise unharmed.

"No, no, no," he spat. "That was supposed to be my…!"

"Billll-llllingzzzzzz," the low, venomous hiss sounded as the smoke and haze cleared, and a nearly six foot humanoid made of living lightning stood in the middle of the ruined platform.

"My…God," Jacob rasped again, staring at the glowing outline that looked like the outline of a human body, but showed no features beyond the crackling hiss of raw energy contained in that silhouette's space. "Abby?"

"It worked. It worked," Thomas cackled just a bit madly. "I should have been there! I should have had….."

Lightning flashed as a hand rose, and a glowing finger pointed.

Thomas screamed as the miniature bolt of lightning leapt out and slammed into the man's stocky body, making him jerk and writhe like an insane marionette.

"Abby, no! Not like this," Jacob jumped up, rushing to intercept her, but faltering as he felt the sheer heat of her energetic form repulse him.

Her hand lowered as her 'face' turned toward him, and she gave a crackling titter that sounded not unlike she had stepped over the abyss of madness herself.

"Jaaaaaaaa-kuuup," he sizzling hiss of a voice giggled. "Don't you zzzzzeeeee? He izzzz a mad dog that muzzzzzt be put down!"

"But not like this," he tried again, glancing over to see Thomas on his side, moaning in genuine pain as his uniform literally smoldered. "If you do this, you're no better than him. Let the law….."

The laughter interrupted him as the very air shook with the force of the dark mirth.

It was not Abby.

Turning, Jacob's eyes rounded hugely as he saw the impossible figure standing before him, and for the first time in his long life, he felt raw fear as the very fabric of reality seemed in danger of collapsing within the usually orderly confines of his rational mind.

"Who…..are you," he asked.

"Who? Don't you mean what, mortal?"

The veritable giant chortled, and looked down at Abby. "Better than I hoped. When I inspired my dupe to create new, and more powerful soldiers, I never expected him to harness the very power of the gods to do it."

Jacob stared up and up and up at the nine foot behemoth in seemingly antique armor, and felt very certain he had just gone mad.

"As to my identity. Is it not obvious even to you? I am Ares, god of war. But you, do you survive, may call me master!"

_To Be Continued…_


	10. Chapter 10

_I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy._

_**SUPER **_

**By LJ**

**Part 10:**

Clark rose out of the frigid sea, genuinely astonished at the lightning that flashed overhead, and the sheer violence of the storm raging around him.

"Diana, do you read," he asked, but heard only a faint crackle over the intercom as he turned, and flew southward.

"Diana?"

He heard only static.

The fact she was almost just over the curve of the globe, and beyond even his powerful did not help. Anything could be happening. Anything at all. Launching himself toward her probable location, he flew as fast as he ever had as he tried not to think that the storm he left behind might not actually be a good thing.

**S**

Diana parked the jet below the towering peak that was the traditional home for Mount Olympus near the ancient city of Thessaloniki that existed today as a modern hodgepodge of culture and style near the Gulf of Salonikia.

She pulled out the faux Spear, and using a makeshift sling, fixed it across her back before turning toward the mountain before her. She could have just flown to the top of the peak, but this was a distraction, and she needed time. Time to keep the right attention in the wrong place.

She ignored those in the nearby fields that turned from their flocks to gape at her. One of the men gave her a timid wave, and she smiled back at him.

Then she began to move toward the nearest cliff. A sheer rise she easily spanned by simply leaping up to the first ledge, and continuing her climb from there. She was halfway up the side when she felt the change in the air.

"Ares," she murmured.

"Diana," came the soft, venomous whisper out of nowhere.

She could sense him, though. The bloodthirsty god of war who tended to spurn Athena's calm strategies for the violent berserker rages of those like the Vikings he once championed under another name. She continued to climb, ignoring the creepy sensation at the back of her nape as she knew he had yet to show himself.

She knew Ares well enough. He favored big entrances, and flashy spectacles. She doubted that had changed overly much simply because they were on a new world.

When she reached the top, she found a lean, powerfully build man in traditional armor waiting on her. He stared smugly as she clambered over the ledge, and eyed him coolly.

"What now, Ares?"

"Diana. Honestly, is this how you greet an old friend?"

"Old….friend," she growled.

"You know, you could have just flown to the precipice. Zeus would not care. I know I don't."

"I'm not concerned with what pleases you, war god," she snapped impatiently.

He was too casual, she mused as she studied him standing there. Too indifferent. This was not what she expected.

"How did you even come to this world?"

"Ironically enough, close behind you. I was, in fact, coming to see you when we were both torn from the multiverse we knew, and dropped in this quaint little backwater. Unlike you, however, I had an instant source of strength and nourishment to call upon. These people are just as mad as any mortals in any realm. Of course, I'm certain you've noticed."

"So you were here all along?"

Ares only smiled.

"Why reveal yourself now?"

"Don't be coy, Amazon. You know what I want. I don't know how you got it here, and do not care. With the Bolt, even that fractured sliver you carry," he said, "I can extend my grip on this world in ways you cannot yet imagine."

"I can imagine. I've already seen some of the madness you've helped spread. Strange, though, that I did not see you around when the Titans threatened this world."

"I knew your friend would drive them back. Besides, I was….preoccupied getting my pawns in place."

"And now?"

"Now, I'd like that bolt, Diana," he said, a chilling smile stretching across his broad features as his eyes glittered with malice.

"By all means, come and get it," she said, gripping the spear in both hands as she pulled it from its sling.

"We don't have to go through this. Just hand over….."

He was still tensing, ready to strike, when the sky suddenly darkened, and a long, roiling peal of thunder filled the airs.

He glanced north for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, then looked back at Diana, and threw back his head in raucous laughter.

"Well played, Amazon! Well played! But you have only postponed the inevitable," he mocked as he vanished from the cliff.

Not, however, before a blast of power sent her flying off the ledge, and out over the valley before she could so much as blink.

She didn't move after she hit the ground.

**S**

The laughter interrupted him as the very air shook with the force of the dark mirth.

It was not Abby.

Turning, Jacob's eyes rounded hugely as he saw the impossible figure standing before him, and for the first time in his long life, he felt raw fear as the very fabric of reality seemed in danger of collapsing within the usually orderly confines of his rational mind.

"Who…..are you," he asked.

"Who? Don't you mean what, mortal?"

The veritable giant chortled, and looked down at Abby. "Better than I hoped. When I inspired my dupe to create new, and more powerful soldiers, I never expected him to harness the very power of the gods to do it?"

Jacob stared up and up and up at the nine foot behemoth in seemingly antique armor, and felt very certain he had just gone mad.

"As to my identity. I am Ares, god of war. But you, do you survive, may call me master!"

"This can't be happening," Jacob gasped, noting some of the surviving soldiers were picking themselves up, and starting to aim weapons at the giant.

Ares laughed as the soldiers opened fire, and Jacob hit the ground again, ducking ricochets this time. The giant took a single step, ignoring the soldiers, and looked down at the living energy that had been Dr. Walters until a few moments ago.

"You are going to do nicely, my dear," he smiled, and then gestured at Thomas Billings. "Now, kill that brainless clod, and join my ranks as the first of my loyal followers who will rip this world asunder, and bathe it in its own blood!"

"Abby, no," Jacob shouted as her the crackling, energetic form turned to face the still twitching man whose clothes continued to smolder from her earlier attack. "Don't do this! It's wrong! All wrong!"

"You have power, woman," Ares growled. "Use it! Or do you prefer that helpless shell you inhabited previously."

Abby gave a furious, hissing screech, and turned to point both hands at Billings who was only now starting to recover. His eyes locked on the giant, then on the former scientist, and knew he was about to die.

"Should…..have been….."

Lightening blinded Jacob when Abby released torrents of raw energy from both hands. All he could do was scream in vain denial as Thomas literally disappeared beneath that furious onslaught. Then, Ares pointed to him, and demanded, "Now. Kill the rest of them."

The solders were still shooting as Abby turned his way, for all the good it did.

Jacob swallowed hard, and grit out, "Abby. Please."

Her hands didn't even waver as they rose again.

**S**

Three of the bolder shepherds moved toward the downed woman, curious as to what had happened to her. Even they knew of the colorfully clad heroine who had recently come to their world. Anything that had the might to throw her down from so great a height had to be powerful. Very powerful. Yet it was not in them to turn their backs on someone that might need help.

They were just approaching the fallen woman when the rush of air announced the arrival of another newcomer.

"Diana!"

Blue eyes fluttered opened, and she looked up at the caped figure who landed beside her as the awed shepherds looked on.

"I'm…okay. Ares was here. He was definitely here."

"I did what that witch said, but something feels off here. Did you notice the skies," he asked, noting the sky was grayer than before, and a distant storm rumbled ominously over the horizon.

Diana followed his gaze.

"Great Hera. Clark, it's Zeus! Zeus himself is coming, but….. He may not be in time," she warned him as she jumped to her feet. "Ares said he could still use this to his advantage. We have to find him. Now! Before he can undo what we've done here."

"Where….."

"He'll be at the heart of the storm. To exploit the energies at their strongest."

Clark nodded, and rose into the air. "The radio seems to be jammed, but I noticed on the way down that the worst of it seems to be moving toward North America. Near the Midwest."

"Then that's where Ares will go," she said, heading for her jet. "Ready to fight a god?"

Clark gave her a faint smile as he rose into the air even as she loped for her jet. "It's hardly the first time," he reminded her, and flew northwest even as she leapt up into her jet, and the aircraft rose to speed after him.

One of the shepherds turned, noticing only then the glowing staff with a jagged bolt at the top that glowed with a peculiar inner light. He reached down to lift the surprisingly light staff, feeling the odd tingling that surged through his arm, and then into his body.

Even as he tried to image what this was, and what might be going on, a woman in white appeared simple materialized before him, took the staff, and smiled at him.

"Sorry, mortal. That's mine. I'll be having it back," she told him, reaching for the staff that she made vanish at her touch.

Having claimed the staff, she simply vanished again, and he turned to call to his companions who were still looking in the direction of the departed heroes. He started to call out, but there was nothing to show them. Nothing at all.

Now if his body would simply stop…..tingling.

**S**

"You are the mortal that controls the barrier on this island," Circe asked as she walked into the communications room in the great temple that slightly impressed her in spite of herself.

"I am Dr. Li," Chang nodded. "Diana told us of you. What do you need?"

"I need to depart for a time. Only your barrier interferes with my magic. Could you please lower it for a time."

"No. But I can give you this," he said, holding up a small box. "It allows you to pass through the energy frequencies broadcast by the protective sphere. It's how Clark and Diana go back and forth without having to lower the island's protective cover."

"Intriguing. How does it operate?"

"You simply press the button on the side, and wear it on your person. It will allow you to come and go after you activate it."

"I see. Not as simple as magic, but close enough. You don't mind watching the children, do you. I may be taking the sorceress with me when the time is right."

"Sorceress…?"

"She means me," Anna stated as she walked into the room, having finally escaped both her lessons, and the fourteen girls all wanting to watch, and participate in them.

"Ms. Graves," the scientist frowned. "Since when you did you become…."

"Things are changing, Dr. Li," she told him. "Fast. So, Circe? Where do you need to go that you might need…?"

The witch had just vanished.

Just like that.

"Not much for the usual amenities, is she," Chang said, trying not to show his unease.

It was one thing to accept Clark, who could fly, and perform incredible feats beyond those of mere mortal men. To see someone literally vanish so was beyond his ability to comprehend.

Even as Anna shook her head, Circe was back, and holding out her hand. "Come, apprentice. We have to go now. We shall be needed."

"Needed? Where?"

"Do you wish to sit and discuss it, or do you wish to ensure your world does not become a trophy dangling about Ares already crowded throne?"

"Ares? The god of war Ares? That Ares?"

"He's the only one I know," she admitted, and held out her hand. "Ready?"

"I…!"

Chang gaped as the two women just vanished.

His wife chose that moment to appear.

"Husband, Mrs. Hastings has the afternoon meal ready. Is Ms. Graves….? I thought she was here?"

"She….."

Chang gestured helplessly.

"Stepped out," he finally concluded.

Alicia frowned, but shrugged. "Well, come along. The girls are already headed to the house to eat. Are you coming?"

He eyed the sophisticated equipment before him monitoring radio transmissions, satellites, and ensuring their barrier shield remained strong, and unwavering just in case. Suddenly, he felt like it all meant very little. Because as impossible as it seemed, he had the feeling he had just witnessed magic. True magic.

And he did not think science could cope with such forces if they were half what legend claimed.

**S**

The soldiers now turned their weapons on Abby, for all the good it did.

"Stop firing," Jacob shouted, still on his knees, and still expecting to die any second as Abby raised her hands again. "Abby, for the love of God…..!"

"God! There is no god but Ares," the giant shouted. "Kill them, girl. Kill them now!"

Jacob howled as the world shifted even as lightning flashed, and he found himself kneeling beside a moaning Thomas Billings a quarter mile away as a caped demigod stood over them for a brief instant.

"Stay here," the improbable figure in primary colors instructed him needlessly as he vanished in a blur of speed even as the shrill whine of a jet roared from overhead even as another colorfully clad figure leapt from that vehicle to fly down before the god.

"Overcompensating again, Ares," Diana spat at him as she landed. "It's just like you."

"Diana. How delightful. And you brought your paramour," he mocked as Clark returned to stand at her side as the solders, figuring out there were getting nowhere, now ceased firing, and began to back off, or seek cover.

"Give it up, Ares. We beat you before, and we'll do it again."

"Oh, I don't think so. You don't have your precious gods here this time. Not as yet. And without your League, I doubt you'll be having much help this time around."

"We're not beaten yet," Clark told him grimly, bunching his own fists.

"Ah, but I've a trump card this time, alien. Magic is a veritable thorn in your side, is it not? Well, I've a very potent thorn I've crafted just for you. Woman, kill this pest," Ares demanded even as he shrank down to a mere six and a half foot to face Diana himself. "As for you….."

"Kal," Diana shouted, leaping to intercept a bolt of energy on one bracelet, and deflecting it towards Ares. "Don't let that hit you. He's right. I feel the raw magic in her energy. You may not be able to resist it."

"Thanks, Diana," he nodded, then moved almost faster than lightning to slam a pair of fists into Ares' now human-sized jaw, knocking him back several feet with a impact that created a thunderous boom on contact.

Jacob stared from his vantage point just out of sight of the unlikely confrontation, and prayed.

"Mortal vermin! I would have spared you to serve me, but now….."

His own fist slammed Clark over a mile from the compound, planting him deep in the soft earth where he hit.

"You won't win," Diana said, deflecting another bolt, and dodging two more.

"Win? I've already won, you witless Amazon. This world is mine. Thanks to you, I've been influencing it for years!"

"Years! You said you arrived with me…..!"

"I also said that unlike you, I was not hampered, or limited upon my arrival. I simply chose the best historical periods, and added a touch of my own special motivation to certain individuals to ensure this world became the churning cauldron of hate and despair I require. With the right match, this globe shall explode, and send shockwaves through the multiverse fueling an orgy of blood and violence that shall feed me for eons!"

"You're mad," Diana hissed, and the next bolt she missed struck her full in the chest, driving her back into a chain-link fence, and sending raw power through her protesting body.

"Mad," Ares laughed. "Hardly, Princess," he mocked. "Now, yield, and I might make a place for you in my new panthe….. Eh?"

Ares turned at the tap on his shoulder, and this time he went flying as a punch far harder than before sent him up and flying over the compound.

"Sorry," he told Diana, helping her stand as the blazing pawn stood staring now, as if unable or unwilling to act without Ares commanding her. "I forgot not to hold back. Too used to….."

"Save the apologies, Kal," Diana called him out of habit before their enemies. "This isn't over."

"Indeed it is not," Ares growled furiously as he strode like a living tank through the few building before him, literally tearing them down as the hiding men scrambled like insects for new hiding places as it seemed gods did indeed walk their earth.

"I think it's time to…"

"Oh, get over yourself, blowhard," a new voice cut in.

All eyes went to the newcomers as Diana frowned most at the appearance of Circe with Anna at her side.

"Are you mad," Diana exclaimed. "This is no place for you two…..!"

"Actually, it's the perfect time and place. I would like to finish this little mission the gods set me so I can get back to my own home, if you don't mind. Sorceress. Contain the girl," she told Anna, who stared blankly at her.

"Sorceress," Clark echoed in confusion.

"How," Anna whispered, audible only to those closest, and those with superheating.

"Oh, for…. Use the lessons I have taught you. Channel her energy as you would your own. She is suffering from containing too much energy, and it overwhelms her. Remember the lesson?"

"Oh, right. Right. I can do that. I hope," she added less audibly as she turned to the living lightning bolt even as she nodded at Diana.

"The gods sent you," Ares began to laugh.

"Watch it, gruesome. Recall who still has your sons in her care," she smirked.

"Phobos," Ares grumbled. "Deimos. I have not forgotten, witch," he swore, and turned to her.

"Yes, the little _pups_ are still well hidden. Hera herself declared they be contained until she ruled on their fate. You don't ease their sentence with this gambit, god of war."

"How is it that you are here, witch? Even your magic is not that great!"

Even as he spoke, Anna gave a shout, and began to burn with bluish-red flames as Abby tried to incinerate her only to find her power being drawn off. For the moment she attacked Anna, the loop had been forged, and remained open. Now she shrank down slightly, closer to her mortal height even as Anna began to grow in size and bulk. If fiery energies could be described so.

"We'll discuss your….lessons later," Diana spat. "We have to….."

"Are you full yet, Anna," Circe called to her even as she reached to her belt, and 'produced' the fallen bolt that Diana had left behind.

"Think…..so," she called back distractedly as Abby began to flicker visibly, and her more human façade could just be made out behind her energetic form now.

"Then here," she said, tossing the staff that drew Ares glance.

"Channel it through this. Now."

"But channel it to _where_," she demanded.

Circe gave her a look that defied description.

Right before Anna understood, and Ares screamed.

"All of it," Circe shouted at her as raw, mystical might was unleashed on the god. "Give him _everything_, sorceress!"

Ares roared, turning to reach toward Anna now who pointed that spear at him that became a conduit for raw power. He staggered forward three steps even as Circe gestured for Clark and Diana to fall back when they would have moved on the visibly weakened god.

"Now," she declared, throwing out her arms, and chanting something in a long dead language that made Diana gasp.

"What are you…..?"

Before Diana could even complete her explanation, Anna stopped the assault, and plunged the radiantly glowing sphere into the ground at her feet.

The resulting explosion coincided with a new, and deafening burst of thunder as a bolt of lightning that looked eerily like a hand slammed down simultaniously, and flung them all back as Ares' roar died stillborn as he vanished from before them. This was followed instantly by a massive explosion of energy beneath the ground that set off a quake that had the ground rumbling as if a volcano were about to erupt beneath their very feet.

The rumbling extended in every direction, but began to fade even as they regained their feet and looked around.

"Is it….over," Anna asked, looking around as she staggered toward Circe.

Who was smirking widely.

"Not again," the naked woman groaned as she realized she had just burned off her clothing yet again.

Clark came forward, wrapping her cape around her, and Circe only laughed.

"You'll learn, sorceress. Until then, a final gift."

She gestured, and the scarlet cloak became a skintight garment that covered her from the neck down.

"Something to preserve your modesty," she winked, thought the garment was more than snug. "It will not burn, nor char. Now, princess, the conduit to Olympus is open, your new world is safe, and I am going to collect my due."

"Wait," Clark barked. "Does this mean we can go home?"

"Why ask me? Ask the god's favorite pet," Circe smirked, nodding at Diana. "As for you, apprentice. Practice all I've taught you diligently, and in due time it is you who will become the premier power on this planet," she teased right before she vanished.

The three stared at one another as Abby's soft moan reached their ears just then, and they all turned to look at the confused woman standing there barefoot in a charred lab coat, covering equally scorched slacks and blouse as she blinked owlishly up at them.

"What….happened," she frowned. "Where….did everyone….go?"

Clark caught her before the woman could fall on her face.

"We should take her with us," Diana decided. "Until we are certain is no longer a threat."

"I'd like to know what happened here," Clark frowned as they watched the soldiers trying to restore some semblance of order in their shattered chain-of-command. "Is this really over?"

"We'll find out soon enough," she said. "Coming," Diana asked Anna as she gestured to her jet.

"You go on," Anna told her. "I want to try flying on my own again."

"Intoxicating, isn't it," Clark asked, lifting the once more human biologist into his arms.

"It's like a child's dream come true," she grinned before bursting into bluish flame, and rising into the air after him.

Jacob, on the hillside overlooking the shattered compound where the earth now visibly sagged downward, stared at the departing heroes as emergency vehicles began arriving. He would later learn that Superman had already ascertained there was nothing left underground. The discharge had completely destroyed everything below. Not that it mattered. Half his captive staff had died when Abby had been reborn.

Billings, now sitting up, just stared blankly at the destruction left in Ares' wake, and kept murmured, "Mine. Should have been mine."

Jacob was hard-pressed to wonder why he had tried to stop Abby in the first place.

**S**

"Circe was right," Diana told Clark as she joined him on the track the next afternoon. "The way to the gods' home is now opened on this world."

"But," he asked, knowing that tone well enough.

They both watched the girls, all of them now, running as they all matched one another as Anna cheered them, and ran along with them. It was, apparently, one thing to coach from the side. Another thing, it seemed to have 'one of their own' alongside them, inspiring them.

"The only way home is _through_ Olympus itself."

Clark, who had been to Olympus, only sighed.

"Which could take years. Or even whole lifetimes," he knew all too well.

"Exactly. If the gods even allowed it. For now, our charge on this world remains according to Artimus. Now, more than ever. It seems that Ares might have been….repelled, but the mischief he created here will only grow worse now that he has managed to unleash raw magic upon the world."

"I've heard," Clark nodded. "Over a hundred and twenty-nine meta incidents across the world already. And those studying the 'outbreaks' expect it to spread."

Then, too, there was Abby, who turned into living lightning the moment she grew upset, or emotional, and it was going to take time to teach her how to control herself. The last thing they wanted was a magical version of 'Livewire' loose on this planet.

Diana nodded. "Exactly. It looks like our jobs are only going to get harder from here on."

"Don't look so sad, Diana," Circe smirked as she appeared behind them, putting an arm around both of them. "Isn't this the sort of thing you two enjoy?"

"Circe! I thought you had left?"

"Funny thing. Hera gave me access to the world-gate, but failed to mention that without the Spear, I couldn't return. Oh, I could. But as you said, it would take me…..quite some time. So, I thought, why bother? For the moment, I've got all the time I need. And, I've my favorite rival right here. Along with a promising new protégé….."

"You are not going to corrupt Anna Graves," Diana spat, pulling away from her as Clark frowned uneasily at the witch.

"Oh, please. I've done nothing but show her the proper way to control her power. You made a good start, hero," she smirked, patting Clark's cheek. "But, trust me, magic is my bread and butter. And Anna has the makings of a very fine sorceress if she is properly instructed. So…. Diana. Truce," Circe smiled.

"It wouldn't hurt to have her on our side," Clark admitted.

Diana only eyed her suspiciously. "All right," she murmured, "But _no_ transforming people," she spat, pointing an accusing finger.

"Even if they ask," Circe teased.

Clark sighed as Diana's eyes narrowed on the witch, and some of the students spotted the woman, and came over to greet her as if she were a friend.

"This….is going to get interesting," Clark murmured as he considered the challenges before them.

**S**

"You lost again, did you?"

"Lost," Ares snorted, showing no hint of displeasure as he lounged with his godly kindred in the bowels of Hades. "Is that how you see it, uncle," he smirked.

He had been exiled from Olympus for his latest scheme until Zeus relented, but he was not worried. He had long since stopped fretting over his father's displeasure.

"What do you call it, my dear nephew," the other drawled, his dark countenance eyeing him speculatively.

"But one more opening gambit in my bid for true power."

"I was watching, you know."

"So was Zeus," Ares smiled. "So I gave him the show he expected, and wished, and allowed the heroes their day. In truth, did any of them had a single wit betwixt them, they'd know how poorly they fared this day."

"Oh?"

"Think, uncle. Until now, that world was but a void. A mote in the multiverse without draw, or import. Until I unleashed divine magics upon its surface, and stirred the pot, as it were. Now, it has become a part of the greater whole, and the warring inevitably to come will but fuel my own needs, and aid in sating my own unquenchable hungers. Surely you understand that, don't you?"

"And how does one world aid you in doing anything?"

"One world, you say? One world among many. The ripples in the multiverse will be traveling for generations after this one. I helped stir the very _titans_ this time, dear uncle," Ares laughed as his wine was refilled by another dead slave. "I birthed heroes and warriors upon a world that had known neither. Which, naturally, will soon be spawning villains of equal mettle to rise to face them. No, Uncle Hades. This was no defeat. This….was only the beginning," the bloodthirsty god chortled. "Only the beginning."

_End…?_


End file.
